An aging writer named Harry is dying of gangrene in the African savannah after their truck burnt out and stranded them at camp. Although his wife Helen reassures him that help is coming, Harry is irritable and argumentative about his impending death, which upsets her. He begins to ruminate on experiences from his past that he never wrote about because he chose to make a living off of marrying rich women rather than reaching his full potential as an author. Some of his memories are of traveling Europe after a battle, skiing in the mountains, listening to Austrian soldiers, hiding a deserter in a cottage. He falls asleep, and when he wakes Helen is returning from a successful hunt. He reflects on how she really is good to him after choosing him out of a string of lovers, although he does not love her back. As they make up from their fight, he recalls another sequence of memories. Two weeks earlier, he developed gangrene while attempting to photograph waterbuck and scratching his knee on a thorn. He remembers traveling through Constantinople, pining for women in Paris, fighting other men, and writing to lovers. As he and Helen eat dinner, he thinks of the time his grandfather’s log cabin burnt down, living in a poor area of Paris, and turning in a boy who’d killed a thief to the police. As he feels death approaching, he wishes he were in different company, as he’s always thought the rich were dull. He meditates on pain for a bit until he feels death sitting on his chest, and Helen has the boys accompanying them move his cot in the tent so he can sleep. Harry dreams that in the morning, a pilot comes to rescue him and takes him to the snowy top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Upon hearing a hyena at night, Helen wakes and sees Harry is unresponsive on his cot.