Free The African Queen by C S Forester

And it felt as if his head, besides, were nailed to the floor boards, so that any attempt at raising it caused him agony. And his eyes could not stand the light; opening them intensified the pain. He shut his eyes and moaned; his mouth was parched and his throat ached, too.
    Allnutt was not a natural-born drinker; his wretched frame could not tolerate alcohol. It is possible that his small capacity for liquor played a part in the unknown explanation of his presence in German Central Africa. And one single night’s drinking always reduced him to this pitiful state, sick and white and trembling, and ready to swear never to drink again—quite content, in fact, not to drink for a month at least.
    Rose paid no attention to his moaning and whimpering. She flung one look of scorn at him and then poured the last bottle of the case overside. She went forward and dragged the second case of gin out from among the boxes of stores. She took Allnutt’s favourite screwdriver and began to prize the case open, with vicious wrenches of her powerful wrist. As the deal came away from the nails with a splintering crash, Allnutt rolled over to look at her again. With infinite trouble he got himself into a sitting position, with his hand at his temples, which felt as if they were being battered with white-hot hammers. He looked a her quite uncomprehending with his aching eyes.
    “Coo, Jesus!” he said, pitifully.
    Rose wasted neither time nor sympathy on him; she went calmly on pouring gin overside. Allnutt got to his knees with his arms on the bench. At the second attempt he got his knees upon the bench, with his body hanging overside. Rose thought he would fall in, but she did not care. He leaned over the gurgling brown water and drank feverishly. Then he slumped back onto the bench and promptly brought up all the water he had drunk, but he felt better, all the same. The light did not hurt his eyes now.
    Rose dropped the last bottle into the river, and made certain there was no other in the case. She returned to the sternsheets, passing him close enough to touch him, but apparently without noticing his presence. She took her toilet things from her tin box, picked up a rug, and went back again into the bows. By the time Allnutt was able to turn his head in that direction the rug was pinned across the funnel stay to the funnel, screening her from view. When she took down the rug again her toilet was obviously finished; she folded the rug, still without paying him the least attention, and began to prepare her breakfast, and then to eat it with perfect composure. Breakfast completed, she cleared all away, and came back into the stern, but she still gave him neither look nor word. With an appearance of complete abstraction she picked out the dirty clothes from her tin box and began to wash them overside, pinning each garment out to dry to the awning overhead. And when she had finished the washing she sat down and did nothing; she did not even look at Allnutt. This was, in fact, the beginning of the great silence.
    Rose had been able to think of no better way of making Allnutt’s life a hell—she did not realize that it was the most effective way possible. Rose had remembered occasions when Samuel had seen fit to be annoyed with her, and had in consequence withdrawn from her the light of his notice and the charm of his conversation, sometimes for as much as twenty-four hours together. Rose remembered what a dreadful place the bungalow had become then, and how Samuel’s silence had wrought upon her nerves, until the blessed moment of forgiveness. She could not hope to equal Samuel’s icily impersonal quality, but she would do her best, especially as she could not, anyway, bring herself to speak to the hateful Allnutt. She had no reliance in her ability to nag, and nagging was the only other practicable method of making Allnutt’s life hell for him.
    During the morning, Allnutt did not take very special notice of his isolation. His wretched mind