CHAPTER XI 
CONCLUSION 
For four years and a half we worked in Lambarene, 
but in the last of them we were able to spend the hot, 
rainy months between autumn and spring at the 
seaside. A white man who pitied my almost utterly 
exhausted wife put at our disposal, at the mouth of 
the Ogowe, two hours from Cape Lopez, a house which 
before the war had been the home of the man who 
watched his timber floats when they lay at anchor, 
but which had been empty since the trade came to a 
standstill. We shall never forget his kindness. Our 
principal food was herrings, which I caught in the sea. 
Of the abundance of fish in Cape Lopez Bay it is 
difficult for any one to form an adequate idea. 
Around the house stood the huts in which the white 
man’s labourers had lived when the trade was in full 
swing. Now, half ruined, they served as sleeping places 
for negroes who passed through. On the second day 
after our arrival I went to see whether there was any 
one in them, but no- one answered my calls. Then I 
opened the doors one by one, and in the last hut saw 
a man lying on the ground with his head almost buried 
in the sand and ants running aU over him. It was a 
- victim of sleeping sickness whom his companions had 
left there, probably some days before, because they 
could not take him any further. He was past all help. 
