David Livingstone: A Private Life

1872, Between Unyanyembe and Bangweulu

I am not finished, whatever the body says at dawn and whatever the men whisper when they think the fever has taken more from me than it has, and I write that first because a man may be reduced in flesh and still keep command if he refuses to surrender the meaning of what surrounds him, and here meaning is the thing most quickly stolen. The paper sweats before the ink has settled. My own skin does the same. Rain comes sideways, then straight down, then rises again from the ground, and the camp lives in a permanent dampness of cloth, temper, and small reckonings, yet none of that dislodges what I know, which is that the trade is in the path itself, not off to one side where polite men in London may ignore it, and that if I die before these pages are sent out they will save the rivers and discard the chains and call the mutilation prudence. I can still prevent that. That is enough. So long as I can still decide what is written, to whom it is entrusted, what number is set beside the captives, what village is named, what trader is described, I remain in hand over the work, and if I remain in hand over the work then I remain, in the only sense now worth defending, in command.