I am asking you now."
His face disclosed nothing to Mrs. Travers' bold and weary eyes.
"What could you do over there?" Jorgenson added as merciless, as
irrepressible, and sincere as though he were the embodiment of that
inner voice that speaks in all of us at times and, like Jorgenson, is
offensive and difficult to answer.
"Remember that I am not a shadow but a living woman still, Captain
Jorgenson. I can live and I can die. Send me over to share their fate."
"Sure you would like?" asked the roused Jorgenson in a voice that had an
unexpected living quality, a faint vibration which no man had known in
it for years. "There may be death in it," he mumbled, relapsing into
indifference.
"Who cares?" she said, recklessly. "All I want is to ask Tom a question
and hear his answer. That's what I would like. That's what I must have."
II
Along the hot and gloomy forest path, neglected, overgrown and strangled
in the fierce life of the jungle, there came a faint rustle of leaves.
Jaffir, the servant of princes, the messenger of great men, walked,
stooping, with a broad chopper in his hand. He was naked from the waist
upward, his shoulders and arms were scratched and bleeding. A multitude
of biting insects made a cloud about his head. He had lost his costly
and ancient head-kerchief, and when in a slightly wider space he stopped
in a listening attitude anybody would have taken him for a fugitive.
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