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motives were truly chivalrous she would not permit him longer to upbraid himself
for the error that he could not by any means have avoided.
At the close of each day's march Anderssen saw to the erection of a comfortable
shelter for Jane and the child. Her tent was always pitched in the most
favourable location. The thorn boma round it was the strongest and most
impregnable that the Mosula could construct.
Her food was the best that their limited stores and the rifle of the Swede could
provide, but the thing that touched her heart the closest was the gentle
consideration and courtesy which the man always accorded her.
That such nobility of character could lie beneath so repulsive an exterior never
ceased to be a source of wonder and amazement to her, until at last the innate
chivalry of the man, and his unfailing kindliness and sympathy transformed his
appearance in so far as Jane was concerned until she saw only the sweetness of
his character mirrored in his countenance.
They had commenced to make a little better progress when word reached them
that Rokoff was but a few marches behind them, and that he had at last
discovered the direction of their flight. It was then that Anderssen took to the
river, purchasing a canoe from a chief whose village lay a short distance from the
Ugambi upon the bank of a tributary.
Thereafter the little party of fugitives fled up the broad Ugambi, and so rapid had
their flight become that they no longer received word of their pursuers. At the
end of canoe navigation upon the river, they abandoned their canoe and took to
the jungle. Here progress became at once arduous, slow, and dangerous.
The second day after leaving the Ugambi the baby fell ill with fever. Anderssen
knew what the outcome must be, but he had not the heart to tell Jane Clayton
the truth, for he had seen that the young woman had come to love the child
almost as passionately as though it had been her own flesh and blood.
As the baby's condition precluded farther advance, Anderssen withdrew a little
from the main trail he had been following and built a camp in a natural clearing
on the bank of a little river.
Here Jane devoted her every moment to caring for the tiny sufferer, and as
though her sorrow and anxiety were not all that she could bear, a further blow
came with the sudden announcement of one of the Mosula porters who had been
foraging in the jungle adjacent that Rokoff and his party were camped quite close
to them, and were evidently upon their trail to this little nook which all had
thought so excellent a hiding-place.
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