Mirror of the Night by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb [Tubb, E. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“I’ve got to get some sleep, Sam,” he muttered. “I haven’t been able to sleep since we started. Every time I drop off I get those horrible nightmares. At first I managed to wake up without screaming, in fact I managed to stay awake all the time, but I can’t keep it up. I’ve got to get some sleep soon or I’ll collapse.”

“Did you sleep in Burma?” I knew he had but I wanted him to tell me. He nodded.

“Yes. No trouble then. It only happened after we left the land.” He licked his lips. “Do you believe in curses, Sam?”

I didn’t and I said so, and I seemed to cheer him up.

“I don’t either,” he said. “Dirty lot of natives making all sorts of threats. They might work on a savage but not a white man.”

“I didn’t answer that. I don’t consider natives as being either ‘dirty’ or ‘savage,’ most of them are a lot better than many white men I know, but I agreed with Bill about the powers of curses.”

Henshaw paused again. “At least,” he said slowly. “I believed that then. Now? I’m not so sure.”

“Nonsense,” said Winters. “Your friend was suffering from delirium caused by his fever. You should have given him morphine.”

“I did,” said Henshaw grimly. “I gave it to him on the fifth night out. He was pretty bad by that time, he hadn’t slept at all for almost a week. He kept dosing off and waking with one of those terrible screams. It began to upset the crew and they wouldn’t come near us. It got so that I had even to fetch our food myself and it began to play on my nerves too. Because I couldn’t leave him for a moment. He seemed to trust me and wanted me beside him all the time.”

“Morphine would have cured him,” insisted Winters. “That and firmness. You made a mistake in pampering to him.”

“It was a small ship,” reminded Henshaw. “His screams couldn’t be muffled and, frankly, I began to worry about his safety. The crew were murmuring to themselves, they were a superstitious lot, and even the officers looked as though they wished he were dead. Anyway, I tried morphine.”

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