The following day some of the foragers from across the river returned bringing nothing. They had discovered such emptiness on the north bank as we had found on the south bank; but "Inshallah!" they said, "we shall find food either to-morrow or the next day."
In the morning I had eaten my last grain of Indian corn, and my last portion of everything solid that was obtainable, and at noon the horrid pains of the stomach had to be satisfied with something. Some potato leaves brought me by Wadi Khamis, a headman, were bruised fine and cooked. They were not bad, still the stomach ached from utter depletion. Then a Zanzibari, with his face aglow with honest pride, brought me a dozen fruit of the size and colour of prize pear, which emitted a most pleasant fruity odour. He warranted them to be lovely, and declared that the men enjoyed them, but the finest had been picked out for myself and officers. He had also brought a pattie made out of the wood-bean flour which had a rich custardy look about it. With many thanks I accepted this novel repast, and I felt a grateful sense of fulness. In an hour, however, a nausea attacked me, and I was forced to seek my bed. The temples presently felt as if constricted by an iron band, the eyes blinked strangely, and a magnifying glass did not enable me to read the figures of Norie's Epitome. My servant, with the rashness of youth, had lunched bravely on what I had shared with him of the sweetly-smelling pear-like fruit, and consequently suffered more severely. Had he been in a little cockle boat on a mad channel sea he could scarcely have presented a more flabby and disordered aspect than had been caused by the forest pears.
Just at sunset the foragers of No. 1 Company, after an absence of thirty-six hours, appeared from the N. bank, bringing sufficient plantains to save the Europeans from despair and starvation; but the men received only two plantains each, equal to four ounces of solid stuff, to put into stomachs that would have required eight pounds to satisfy.
The officers Stairs, Jephson, and Parke, had been amusing themselves the entire afternoon in drawing fanciful menus, where such things figured as:--
Another had shown his Anglo-Saxon proclivities for solids such as:--