As I looked at the poor men struggling wearily onward it appeared to me as though a few hours only were needed to ensure our fate. One day, perhaps two days, and then life would ebb away. How their eyes searched the wild woods for the red berries of the phrynia, and the tartish, crimson, and oblong fruit of the amoma! How they rushed for the flat beans of the forest, and gloated over their treasures of fungi! In short, nothing was rejected in this severe distress to which we were reduced except leaves and wood. We passed several abandoned clearings; and some men chopped down pieces of banana stalk, then searched for wild herbs to make potage, the bastard jack fruit, or the _fenessi_, and other huge fruit became dear objects of interest as we straggled on.
"Return we could not, nor Continue where we were; to shift our place Was to exchange one misery with another. And every day that came, came to decay A day's work in us.
On the 7th of October we began at 6.30 A.M. to commence that funereal pace through the trackless region on the crest of the forest uplands. We picked up fungi, and the _matonga_ wild fruit, as we travelled, and after seven hours' march we rested for the day. At 11 A.M. we had halted for lunch at the usual hour. Each officer had economised his rations of bananas. Two were the utmost that I could spare for myself. My comrades were also as rigidly strict and close in their diet, and a cup of sugarless tea closed the repast. We were sitting conversing about our prospects, discussing the probabilities of our couriers reaching some settlement on this day, or the next, and the time that it would take them to return, and they desired to know whether in my previous African experiences I had encountered anything so grievous as this.
"No; not quite so bad as this," I replied. "We have suffered; but not to such an extremity. Those nine days on the way into Ituru were wretched. On our flight from Bumbiré we certainly suffered much hunger, and also while floating down the Congo to trace its course our condition was much to be pitied; but we had a little of something, and at least large hope. The age of miracles is past, it is said, but why should they be? Moses drew water from the rock at Horeb for the thirsty Israelites. Of water we have enough and to spare. Elijah was fed by ravens at the brook Cherith, but there is not a raven in all this forest. Christ was ministered unto by angels. I wonder if any one will minister unto us?"