Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the change of light, he shouted exultantly, in a voice his British friends would not have recognized. The shining to the southward was, beyond all doubt, the sea, and the white blurs among the palms could represent only factories! Turning, he shook his fist at the forest with childish solemnity.
"Tell Amadu to turn that gun away from him, Monday. It might go off, and I be no fit to lose him," he said in coast jargon. "I don't care what your color is, you are fine fellows too much, both of you, and now we'll go on while we have strength left to reach them factory."
How much his followers comprehended did not appear. The man he called Monday grinned from ear to ear, the other slung his rifle, and they went on, staggering at their best pace toward the sea, though Dane had a vague impression that, with one arm beneath either shoulder, the two ragged Africans dragged him most of the way. Some time later a blindingly whitewashed factory rose up before them against a background of tossing spray and equally dazzling sea, and Dane made shift to reach its outer stairway unaided. An elderly man and a lady who sat on the shady veranda rose at the sight of him. Making an attempt to raise his battered sun-hat, he lurched up the stairway. The attempt was not successful. The sun-hat fell over the balustrade, and he saw it long afterward, painted green and blue, upon a Krooboy's head. Clutching at the topmost rail, he steadied himself by it.
"Unexpected pleasure to see you here, Miss Castro," he said. "Salutations, Dom Pedro! Sorry to arrive in this fashion; not quite myself to-day."
The elderly man shouted, clapping his hands, the lady moved toward the newcomer; then factory and palm trees went round and round before him, and Dane, loosing his hold, went down with a crash.
What happened next he did not remember, having only a hazy recollection of tossing in burning torment for an interminable space, during which at intervals somebody held a glass filled with cooling liquid to his lips, while now and then gentle hands, whose touch was soothing, raised his aching head. Still, he fancied that at times a white face bent over him, and once, when the dim light of a calabash lamp beat into his eyes, that waves of dusky hair drooped close above his forehead, and that he caught, and held fast with all his strength, the cool fingers that slipped into his own. They seemed to draw him back out of the black abyss into which he was sliding; and, he surmised afterward, they actually did so.