He knew enough of the human brain to be convinced that the only possible relief to this tension was success.
Victor Durnovo would never know rest now until he reached the spot where the Simiacine should be.

If the trees were there, growing, as he said, in solitary state and order, strangely suggestive of human handiwork, then Victor Durnovo was saved.

If no such spot was found, madness and death could only follow.
To save his companion's reason, Meredith more than once drugged his food; but when the land began to rise beneath their feet in tentative, billow-like inequalities--the deposit of a glacial age--Durnovo refused to stop for the preparation of food.

Eating dry biscuits and stringy tinned meat as they went along, the four men--three blacks and one white--followed in the footsteps of their mad pilot.
"We're getting to the mountains--we're getting to the mountains! We shall be there to-night! Think of that, Meredith--to-night!" he kept repeating with a sickening monotony.

And all the while he stumbled on.
The perspiration ran down his face in one continuous stream; at times he paused to wipe it from his eyes with the back of his hands, and as these were torn and bleeding, there were smears of blood across his cheeks.
The night fell; the moon rose, red and glorious, and the beasts of this untrodden forest paused in their search for meat to watch with wondering, fearless eyes that strange, unknown animal--man.
It was Durnovo who, climbing wildly, first saw the break in the trees ahead.