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I first met Jimmy Antrim at a detestable spot called M’bagwe, half-way through Smuts’s invasion of German East Africa. Our hands were full of pitiful wounded after the fight at M’kalamo, and so my ambulance had lagged behind, arriving in the cool of the evening at a place where we had been told that water would be found. By the time we reached it the Division had done its worst; all that remained of the promised river was a series of rock-pools from which one scooped with difficulty a creamy liquid coloured like coffee grounds; but once it had been water, and that was enough for us. Near it, like a jealous watch-dog, Antrim had pitched his tent, or, rather, slung between two acacias of a vivid and illusive greenness the piece of rotten tarpaulin that sheltered him from the sun.

As I rode up he rose, in defence of his coffee-grounds, from the yellow patch of grass on which he had been lying. He came staggering out into the sun, a tall man in a captain’s uniform, his pale face blotched with freckles like a leopard’s skin, reddish hair, and eyes of deep blue, singularly honest, that looked straight into mine from their cavernous orbits. I told him who we were; and as soon as he was satisfied that we needed water and had a right to it he trotted off like a dog to its kennel, and left us to ourselves.

Later in the evening I strolled round again to his bivouac, partly because he was the only white man with whom I could talk, and partly because I felt certain that the man was ill and hoped that I might do something for him. There he still lay on his patch of grass, sticking to his post as if he feared that he would be court-martialled for letting the water evaporate. Evidently he resented my visit. He asked me gruffly what I wanted, and when I told him that I’d come round for a smoke and a talk, he was silent, as if he didn’t believe me.

“At any rate,” I said, “you’d better let me have a look at you. When a man’s as ill as you are he shouldn’t sniff at a doctor.”

“Doctors?” he said, with a laugh. “I think I know more about malaria than most of them. Don’t talk to me about quinine, I’m what the Germans call chinin-fest. I might as well eat charcoal as quinine. You’d better take a pew.”

The pew was another tuft of grass, and I took it. When I lit my pipe I discovered that he, poor devil, had run out of tobacco. With difficulty I made him accept a spare bag of Magaliesburg that one of Brits’s troopers had given me. “That’s better than quinine,” he said, loading his pipe with fingers that trembled.

He lit a hurricane lamp. The air danced with moths and mosquitoes. Once again I was struck with the extreme pallor of his face. “A candidate for blackwater fever,” I thought. “This fellow ought to be sent back to the base.” I told him so.

At this he became excited. “All you medicine-wallahs are just the same,” he said. “I know all about myself. I know what I feel like, and I also know that I’m perfectly fit to carry on. When I report sick you can do what you like with me.”

“You should have reported sick long ago,” I told him.

“But I’ve not done so,” he said, “and I’m not going to.”

Of course, the type of man was familiar; you get him in all ranks: the old regular soldier who thinks that fitness is a point of honour. In German East they died like flies for their pains. But this man was somehow different. There was more than fever on his mind, and what it was I couldn’t guess until we began to talk about the country through which we were passing. Then he soon showed that he knew more about it than the German maps told us.

“You know this country pretty well,” I said.

“Yes. How long have you been in East Africa?”

“Six months.”

“Up at Nairobi,” he sneered.

“For five days.”

“My name is Antrim.”

This sudden information seemed unnecessary. I told him mine, vaguely flattering myself that it might be familiar. But it wasn’t.

“It’s an extraordinary country,” I said, “full of atmosphere.”

“Atmosphere? What do you mean?”

That was a question that it would take a book to answer.

“I mean that there’s more in it than you can see with your eyes or survey with triangles. You never know what you’re going to find. You spoke of Nairobi. Well, Nairobi, to my mind, has none. This country here is full of secrets—ghosts, if you like to put it that way.”

“Ghosts?” he echoed. “You’re right. You’re right. Ghosts. But you’re the first man I’ve met here that’s seen it. What did you say your name was? I’ve a regular East African memory. You say you never know what you’re going to find. That’s where you differ from me. I do.” He chuckled to himself. “That’s why I’m not reporting sick, doctor. D’you see?”

I didn’t; but I pretended that I did. Or perhaps I really thought I did. I thought he was going to find an attack of blackwater and a shallow seven-foot trench. And of course I was wrong, as doctors usually are.

Next day we moved on and caught up with the division. All through the day’s march my meeting with Antrim had stuck in my mind, and in the evening I made some inquiries about him.

“An old regular,” they told me. “Jimmy Antrim. He’s well known in Nairobi; used to be in the K.A.R. Bwana Chui, the natives call him. His freckles do make him look like a leopard. Antrim’s a curious fellow. In the old days up at Nairobi he was a popular man, thorough good sportsman all round. Then there was a queer story about a hunting trip—somewhere down in this country. He went out with a man and his wife. There was trouble with the wife; a queer business that was never properly explained. If you get hold of some of the old East Africans they’ll tell you all about it with accumulated interest.”

Of course that explained why Antrim had tested me with his name and asked me if I’d been in Nairobi. I didn’t ask the old East Africans. It struck me that if there were any story I’d rather hear it from Antrim’s side. I was prejudiced in his favour. I liked his eyes. I could have sworn that whatever had happened the man was a sahib. His figure was often in my thoughts although I never met him. I kept on thinking of the way in which he had risen when I spoke of the atmosphere of German East; the eagerness with which he had jumped at the word “ghosts.” I began to wonder if the extraordinary atmosphere which had impressed itself on me that night had really arisen from the country at all, whether, in fact, Antrim himself had not been responsible for it; for men who see ghosts have a habit of carrying their visions along with them. I wondered if I should ever meet him again. Probably if I did he would have forgotten me.

Weeks went by. Twice we imagined we had the enemy in our net, and twice they slipped us. It seemed to us all that the campaign was getting stale; we grew sick of the whole weary business of bush-fighting and thirst and starvation. Our thrust was stopping of its own inertia. We settled down in a bush country at the edge of the Masai steppe and watched our cattle and mules and horses dying of fly. When they died in camp the doctors had to see that they were buried. We might just as well have left them to the lions.

At that camp—it was called N’dalo—Antrim suddenly reappeared. In the meantime they had kept him doing odd jobs on lines of communication. Sometimes he was political officer, sometimes intelligence, sometimes A.P.M. In all these billets his knowledge of native languages was useful. It was as political officer, in white tabs, that he came to us; but, quite apart from the change of uniform, I wouldn’t have known him.

The man had looked awful enough by the water at M’bagwe; now there was nothing left of him but his eyes. His uniform bagged about him; his hands were claws, his face a dirty yellow. There was nothing left but those two points of burning blue. And how they burned! It was just as if the quivering flame of his life were concentrated in them. Puff that out, the man would be dead, and death a mercy. Still, he was carrying on. His tent was full every day of natives who had been arrested on the edge of the camp by our patrols. He was even full of a curious, fierce energy. “Fey” was the only word that one could give it. I suppose that, as an Irishman, he had a right to it.

One day, inspecting a fatigue party of Baluchis who were burying the last of their transport animals, I made a gruesome discovery. One of the sepoys, who had scattered through the bush in search of soft ground for the burial, had suddenly thrown up his arms like a drowning man and disappeared into the earth. The others ran up to see what had happened, and found him, frightened, but none the worse, at the bottom of an old game-pit of the kind that the natives dig to catch animals. The mouth of the pit had been quite masked by a growth of creeping vines and thorns. They pulled him up, laughing at the mishap, with a cable of linked belts, and as soon as he got his breath he began to tell the Jemadar what he had seen. When he came to himself at the bottom of the pit he had found himself lying between two human skeletons. It would have been natural enough to find the pit full of bones; but these two seemed to be complete, just lying there together undisturbed as the ants had left them.... “Some poor devils of natives,” I thought, “probably driven to hide there by our friend Zahn.” Zahn was the German officer who had been in charge of that district in peace-time; a hard case, and one of the blackest in the black book with which the intelligence supplied us.

“Will the sahib see for himself?” the Jemadar asked me; and since the discovery would have to be reported, I said “Yes,” watching the Baluchis as they cleared the tangles of undergrowth from the mouth of the pit and let in the light.

Then I climbed down. There were two complete skeletons, as the sepoy had told us. In one of them the right thigh-bone was completely broken; an ugly fracture in the middle third. The bones were those of a big man, more than six foot, I judged him. The shape of his skull told me that he had been a European. The other, shorter, but massively built, had obviously been a native. No scrap of clothing was to be found; the ants had seen to that; but scattered over the floor of the pit was a number of metallic objects: a gold hunter watch, on the dial of which I was surprised to read the name of an English maker; a rusty hammer; a couple of corroded pans of the kind which men use for prospecting; a clasp knife, a pencil case of untarnished gold; and, last of all, a gold locket which had once hung round the white man’s neck, but now dangled within the cage of his ribs. These things I collected and carried to headquarters, leaving a guard of Baluchis to see that nothing was disturbed.

Headquarters was not interested in my find. Nobody seemed to know what I should do with my trophies until a languid brigade-major suggested that Antrim was my man. “Take them to Captain Antrim, with my compliments, and ask him to report.”

Antrim was sitting at his table, writing under the same old tarpaulin. When he saw me coming he cleared away the natives that were waiting to be examined and rose with difficulty to his feet.

“So you’ve come at last,” he said bewilderingly.

“Headquarters sent me——” I began.

“Yes, yes, I know. Sit down. Let me see what you’ve got.”

The sepoy whom I had borrowed from the Baluchis dumped everything on the table. Antrim went paler and paler. I thought the man was going to faint and jumped up to catch him.

“No, I’m all right,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

He picked up the watch and opened it. It had stopped at ten minutes past five. He closed it with a snap. Then his thin fingers strayed over the other rubbish. It was just as if he were afraid to touch them, but felt compelled to do so. Last of all he came to the locket. He pressed the spring; but it wouldn’t open. He forced it with a pen-knife. A scrap of paper fluttered out on to the ground. I picked it up and read a dozen English words that were written on it in pencil: Dingaan found me. Too late, though. Leg smashed. Nobody to blame. Lacey has the figures.—J. D. R.

I handed the paper to Antrim; but he took no notice of me. His eyes were fixed on a portrait, a coloured miniature, that the locket contained. I leaned over him and looked. The portrait was that of a young girl with dark hair and a pale, serious face at which Antrim gazed and gazed.

“English,” I said. “Look at the paper. It’s a beautiful face.”

“Beautiful?” he echoed. “Not beautiful enough.” He laughed nervously. “It’s my wife.”

He looked at me with his blue eyes blazing, his lips trembling. Evidently the poor devil’s mind had given way. That sometimes happens after months of malaria.

“It’s my wife,” he repeated, with an awful smile. “Don’t you believe me?”

Then he tottered, his hands dropped the locket, I caught him and lowered him gently to the ground. He lay there quietly, his eyes closed. I was glad that he’d closed his eyes. They were unbearable. But his lips still smiled. That was the funny thing. He looked as if he had suddenly lost all anxiety.

I sent the Baluchi running round to the ambulance for bearers and a stretcher. Antrim was still lying quiet when they arrived. I roused him.

“Look here, I’m going to shove you into hospital,” I said.

He took it like a lamb.

“Right-o! You can do what you like with me now. I’ve finished with the ghosts.”

Evidently he remembered our conversation at M’bagwe in spite of the “East African memory.”

We hoisted him on to the stretcher and carried him away. He lay there placidly, his eyes still closed. I walked by his side, thinking what a tragedy it was that he hadn’t given way before his reason went. Suddenly I heard him whispering: “Doctor!”

“Yes?” I bent over him and listened.

“Will you do me a favour?”

“Of course.” He sounded sane enough.

“I want you to go round to the wireless people—Harrison’s a friend of mine—and put through a private cable for me. Really important. Will you take it down?”

“Very good. Fire away!”

He dictated: “Antrim, Chalke Manor, Wilts. I don’t know if you’ll have to put England....”

“I’ll see about that.”

“Thanks. Go on: Ghost laid. Love. Jim. Got it?”

I read it over. He was wonderfully collected. I began to wonder if I’d made a mistake in diagnosis.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said. “A thousand thanks.”

He closed his eyes again. The stretcher passed into the shadow of the hospital banda. A fortnight later, when I lay convalescent beside him on the way to the base, I heard his incredible story; and this is what I made of it.