The unintelligible gabble of the light-hearted bearers of his litter was all that reached his ears.

And ever at his side was Joseph--cheerful, indefatigable, resourceful.

There was in his mind one of the greatest happinesses of life--the sense of something satisfactorily accomplished--the peacefulness that comes when the necessity for effort is past and left behind--that lying down to rest which must surely be something like Death in its kindest form.
The awe inspired by Victor Durnovo's name went before the little caravan like a moral convoy and cleared their path.

Thus guarded by the name of a man whom he hated, Jack Meredith was enabled to pass through a savage country literally cast upon a bed of sickness.
In due course the river was reached, and the gentle swing of the litter was changed for the smoother motion of the canoe.

And it was at this period of the journey--in the forced restfulness of body entailed--that Joseph's mind soared to higher things, and he determined to write a letter to Sir John.
He was, he admitted even to himself, no great penman, and his epistolary style tended, perhaps, more to the forcible than to the finished.
"Somethin'," he reflected, "that'll just curl his back hair for 'im; that's what I'll write 'im." Msala had been devastated, and it was within the roofless walls of Durnovo's house that Joseph finally wrote out laboriously the projected capillary invigorator.
"HONOURED SIR" (he wrote),--"Trusting you will excuse the liberty, I take up my pen to advise you respectfully"-- while writing this word Joseph closed his left eye--"that my master is taken seriously worse.
Having been on the sick-list now for a matter of five weeks, he just lies on his bed as weak as a new-born babe, as the sayin' is, and doesn't take no notice of nothing.