Occasional starts
of exquisite joy ran through them, and then they were peaceful again.
Chapter XXI
Thanks to Mr. Flushing's discipline, the right stages of the river were
reached at the right hours, and when next morning after breakfast the
chairs were again drawn out in a semicircle in the bow, the launch
was within a few miles of the native camp which was the limit of the
journey. Mr. Flushing, as he sat down, advised them to keep their eyes
fixed on the left bank, where they would soon pass a clearing, and in
that clearing, was a hut where Mackenzie, the famous explorer, had
died of fever some ten years ago, almost within reach of
civilisation--Mackenzie, he repeated, the man who went farther inland
than any one's been yet. Their eyes turned that way obediently. The eyes
of Rachel saw nothing. Yellow and green shapes did, it is true, pass
before them, but she only knew that one was large and another small;
she did not know that they were trees. These directions to look here
and there irritated her, as interruptions irritate a person absorbed in
thought, although she was not thinking of anything. She was annoyed with
all that was said, and with the aimless movements of people's bodies,
because they seemed to interfere with her and to prevent her from
speaking to Terence. Very soon Helen saw her staring moodily at a coil
of rope, and making no effort to listen.
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