Fifteen Years After

Both Stella and Tota were too weary to be moved, so we camped that night
in the baboons' home, but were troubled by no baboons. Stella would not
sleep in the cave; she said the place terrified her, so I made her up a
kind of bed under a thorn-tree. As this rock-bound valley was one of the
hottest places I ever was in, I thought that this would not matter; but
when at sunrise on the following morning I saw a veil of miasmatic mist
hanging over the surface of the ground, I changed my opinion. However,
neither Stella nor Tota seemed the worse, so as soon as was practical
we started homewards. I had already on the previous day sent some of the
men back to the kraals to fetch a ladder, and when we reached the cliff
we found them waiting for us beneath. With the help of the ladder the
descent was easy. Stella simply got out of her rough litter at the top
of the cliff, for we found it necessary to carry her, climbed down the
ladder, and got into it again at the bottom.

Well, we reached the kraals safely enough, seeing nothing more of
Hendrika, and, were this a story, doubtless I should end it here
with--"and lived happily ever after." But alas! it is not so. How am I
to write it?

My dearest wife's vital energy seemed completely to fail her now that
the danger was past, and within twelve hours of our return I saw that
her state was such as to necessitate the abandonment of any idea of
leaving Babyan Kraals at present. The bodily exertion, the anguish of
mind, and the terror which she had endured during that dreadful night,
combined with her delicate state of health, had completely broken her
down. To make matters worse, also, she was taken with an attack of
fever, contracted no doubt in the unhealthy atmosphere of that accursed
valley. In time she shook the fever off, but it left her dreadfully
weak, and quite unfit to face the trial before her.