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Her one thought was to find some one who could help her--some woman who had
had children of her own--and with the thought came recollection of the friendly
village of which Anderssen had spoken. If she could but reach it--in time!
There was no time to be lost. Like a startled antelope she turned and fled up the
trail in the direction Anderssen had indicated.
From far behind came the sudden shouting of men, the sound of shots, and then
silence. She knew that Anderssen had met the Russian.
A half-hour later she stumbled, exhausted, into a little thatched village. Instantly
she was surrounded by men, women, and children. Eager, curious, excited
natives plied her with a hundred questions, no one of which she could
understand or answer.
All that she could do was to point tearfully at the baby, now wailing piteously in
her arms, and repeat over and over, "Fever--fever--fever."
The blacks did not understand her words, but they saw the cause of her trouble,
and soon a young woman had pulled her into a hut and with several others was
doing her poor best to quiet the child and allay its agony.
The witch doctor came and built a little fire before the infant, upon which he
boiled some strange concoction in a small earthen pot, making weird passes
above it and mumbling strange, monotonous chants. Presently he dipped a
zebra's tail into the brew, and with further mutterings and incantations sprinkled
a few drops of the liquid over the baby's face.
After he had gone the women sat about and moaned and wailed until Jane
thought that she should go mad; but, knowing that they were doing it all out of
the kindness of their hearts, she endured the frightful waking nightmare of those
awful hours in dumb and patient suffering.
It must have been well toward midnight that she became conscious of a sudden
commotion in the village. She heard the voices of the natives raised in
controversy, but she could not understand the words.
Presently she heard footsteps approaching the hut in which she squatted before a
bright fire with the baby on her lap. The little thing lay very still now, its lids,
half-raised, showed the pupils horribly upturned.
Jane Clayton looked into the little face with fear-haunted eyes. It was not her
baby--not her flesh and blood--but how close, how dear the tiny, helpless thing
had become to her. Her heart, bereft of its own, had gone out to this poor, little,
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