Now the
Government decreed that seed-grain should be distributed to the
people, as well as advances of money for the purchase of new oxen;
and the white men were doubly worked for this new duty, while
William skipped from brick to brick laid down on the trampled mud,
and dosed her charges with warming medicines that made them rub
their little round stomachs; and the milch goats throve on the
rank grass. There was never a word from Scott in the Khanda
district, away to the southeast, except the regular telegraphic
report to Hawkins. The rude country roads had disappeared; his
drivers were half mutinous; one of Martyn's loaned policemen had
died of cholera; and Scott was taking thirty grains of quinine a
day to fight the fever that comes with the rain: but those were
things Scott did not consider necessary to report. He was, as
usual, working from a base of supplies on a railway line, to cover
a circle of fifteen miles radius, and since full loads were
impossible, he took quarter-loads, and toiled four times as hard
by consequence; for he did not choose to risk an epidemic which
might have grown uncontrollable by assembling villagers in
thousands at the relief-sheds.
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