He woke often to Isabel praying and Chico chanting as holy water was sprinkled upon him. When sleep did claim him and take him away from his earthly agony the Giant Face often awaited in the big black horror-filled bedroom of his baby-fears. But it was not always so.

On odd occasions he would relive the worst of earthly times.

There was an endless reliving of his convalescence in Goa India as he suffered from the eye-infections that had plagued him in the subcontinent while he toiled thanklessly as that hated “White Niցցer” for John Company.

Your hated White Niցցer fades from life my countrymen.

There was the agony of his slow-healing foot injury on his journey from Cairo through Medina, Damascus and Mecca, suffering all the while as a reviled Afghan Dervish; bullied by British and Turkish officials and besieged by Arab well-wishers and Bedawi beggars alike. He did achieve some renown though. The Moslem Bedawi called him “the Father of Mustachios” after his carefully cultivated facial hair, which did appeal to his odd sense of grandiosity. And there was the syphilis that he had acquired from that bibi in Cairo. In all the trip was dreadful, taxing, painful and without solitude, so it would haunt his fever-dreams with appropriate virulence.

Christians may be spiritually barbaric but at least they value solitude.

He would, when the fevers were particularly bad, relive his malarial nightmare march through the heart of Africa. The one thing that could be said for that ambulatory and stretcher-borne fever-wracked journey was that the fever overheated his blood to the point that it apparently killed the syphilis! If he had seen the hand of a forgiving Creator in his own life he would have to point to this cure, and the faithful woman that prayed so tirelessly by his side for such a self-absorbed and driven man.

The Giant Face returned to him again, and again...

…The serpent was said to be 160 feet long. A creature of this size he reasoned would haunt the estuaries, the great tidal river mouths that poured into the South Atlantic. No mere scout along the inland river would do. Surely the beast came to rest or spawn upstream, perhaps even up a tributary. But something so large must surely feed off of the fertile banks of the coastal shelf, that imaginary and unseen world below the waves before the continental shelf ended abruptly and plunged into the true abyss haunted by exclusively saltwater beasts.

He and his companions used a long narrow dugout canoe for their exploration. This craft was more than adequate for the river scouting, but proved unmanageable in the rougher waters just off the coast…

…And there he was, with the sun falling behind the distant rainforest clinging like lichen to the capsized canoe. There were days and nights of fear, fear of being eaten by the ravenous sharks that infested these rich coastal waters. He had about given up hope, floating on the dark tides as they were…

…Then he felt it, cool rain, breaking over the forest; a forest that hung over the very waters that lapped this rocky beach.

He woke to the pattering of holy water upon his brow, a brow that no longer beaded moisture of its own accord. The voice that greeted him was Isabel’s, “My Richard, your agonies were fearful. It is so good to have you back. You were brought back with prayer Richard—God knows you to be true.”

“How do I look Zoo?”

“You are wan, thin and hoarse. But you are back, beaming those magnificent eyes.”

He had to say something to ally her hopes. “Yaas Zoo, the eyes of the hypnotic Gypsy do not fail me. Zoo, I think I’m a little better. Where is that Chico? I must thank him for his prayers.”

“Why Richard, his prayers must be coming to you from the chapel. He has not been about. He has been keeping the faith for me while I ministered to your needs. I shall bring him.”

“Yaas Zoo, bring the little beast by. It would be nice to see him. I must rise…”

He felt himself sinking into a welcoming un-haunted sleep, free of the accursed Giant Face of his baby-fears.