My master grew weaker daily, and the weather was insufferably hot, the
thermometer being, in the coolest place, 107 at twelve in the morning,
and 109 at three in the afternoon. At his own suggestion I made a couch
for him outside the hut, in the shade, and placed a mat for myself by
its side. For five successive days I took him in my arms from his bed in
the hut to the couch outside, and back again at sunset, after which time
he was too much debilitated to be lifted from the bed on which he lay.
He attempted to write once, and but once, during his illness; but before
paper and ink could be brought him, he had sunk back on his pillow,
completely exhausted by his ineffectual attempt to sit up in his bed.
Fancying by various symptoms he had been poisoned, I asked him one day
whether he thought that, in any of his visits the Arabs or Tuaricks, any
poisonous ingredients had been put into the camel's milk they had given
him, of which he was particularly fond. He replied, "No, my dear boy; no
such thing has been done, I assure you. Do you remember," he continued,
"that when on a shooting excursion at Magaria, in the early part of
February, after walking the whole of the day, exposed to the scorching
rays of the sun, I was fatigued, and lay down under the branches of a
tree for some time? The earth was soft and wet, and from that hour to
the present I have not been free from cold: this has brought on my
present disorder, from which, I believe, I shall never recover.
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