A/N: Dr Sterndale left civilisation behind him... England's green and pleasant land is from William Blake's Jerusalem.
I am memory and torment – I am town! I am all that ever went with evening dress…- Kipling
He was the very least bit disappointed not to find a new installment of Dr Watson's narratives in the issue. He usually tore the thing apart immediately after reading one – waste not, want not: paper was best for plant presses and wrappings.
Some beardless missionary saw him rolling a cigarette of a church bazaar advertisement and proclaimed him a barbarian; he burst out laughing barbarically.
It was his loved one's nickname for him. It was his wife's curse for him. It was the difference between fighting the desert and deserting the fight.
It was common sense.
But the stories he collected. They were squeezed between his journals and innumerate samples; they traveled him through choleraic hell of '99 and high water of '03.
He lost more pack horses to stealing and more carriers to worms than he lost these tales of misery and corruption – these legends of bravery and pity. The beacon of justice and mercy.
Countless nights, guarding quinine supply; shoot, don't ask; his tent not a shelter but a trap.
Hourless days, charting, hunting, airing herbaria; his hair an Ascot course for lice, his clothes uniformed by months of wearing.
Rabies.
Rotten water.
Dreams of England's green and pleasant land.
He flattened his warped notebook on his knee.
Jan. 15th. In CT, wire Mr Holmes and find a bindery.