Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-10-17

piled OScard, ana With nlS great strength he shook Durnovo like gar nent.
 And so Victor Durnovo died. His stained soul left his body in Guy Os- cards hands, and the big Englishman shook the corpse, trying to awake 1t from that sleep which knows no earth ly waking.
 So, after all, heaven stepped in and laid Its softening hand on the judg- ment of men. But there was strange irony in the mode of death. It was strange that this man, who never could have closed his eyes again, should have been stricken down by the sleep Ing sickness.
 They laid the body on the floor and covered the face. which was less grew some in death, for the pity of the eyes had given place to peace.
 The morning light, bursting suddenly through the trees as it does in equato- rial Africa, showed the room set in or der and Guy Oscard sleeping in his camp chair. Behind him, on the floor, lay the form of Victor Durnovo. Joseph, less iron nerved than the great big game hunter, was awake and astir with the dawn. He, too, was calmer now. He had seen death face to face too often to be appalled, by 1t in broad daylight.
 So they buried Victor Durnovo be- tween the two giant palms at Msala, with his feet turned toward the river which he had made his. as if ready to arise when the call comes and un- dertake one of those marvellous jour- neys of his which are yet household word on the west coast.
 The cloth fluttered as they lowered him into his narrow resting place, and the face they covered had strange mystic grin, as if he saw something that they could not perceive. Perhaps he did. Perhaps.he saw the simiacine plateau, and knew that, after all, he had won the last throw, for up there, far above the table lands of central Africa, there lay beneath high heaven a charnel house. Rounded down the slope by his tormentors, he had left a memento behind him surer than their torturing knives, keener than their sharpest steel He had left the sleep ing sickness behind him.
 His last journey had been worthy of his reputation. In twenty days he had covered the distance between the plateau and Msala. stumbling on alone, blinded, wounded. sore stricken, through thousand daily valleys of death. With wonderful endurance he had padded night and day down the sleek river without rest, with the dread microbe of the sleeping sickness slowly creeping through his veins.
 He had lived in dread of this disease, as men do of sickness which clutches them at last; but when 1t came he did not recognize 1t. He was so racked by pain that he never recognized the symptoms. He was so panic stricken. so paralyzed by the nameless fear that lay behind him, that he. could only think of pressing forward. In the night hours he would suddenly rise from his precarious bed under the shadow of fallen tree and stagger on. haunted by a picture of his ruthless foes pressing through the jungle in pursuit. Thus he accomplished his wonderful journey alone through trackless forests. Thus he tended off the sickness which grip ped him the moment that he laid him down to rest
 He had left it. grim legacy, to his torturers. and before he reached the river all was still on the simiacine plateau.
 And so we leave Victor Durnovo. His sins are buried with him. and beneath the giant palms at Msala lies Maurice Gordon's secret.
 And so we leave Msala, the accursed camp. Far up the Ogowe river. on the left bank. the giant palms still stand sentry. and beneath their shade the crumbling walls of a cursed house are slowly disappearing beneath luxuriant growths of grass and brushwood.