em: but they mustn't
expect me to follow them. This isn't a country where a man can say what
he thinks."

The Englishman rested his elbows on the ground. "And the Union Jack is
supposed to be flying over us."

"Yes, with a black bar across it for the Company," laughed the Colonial.

"Do you ever have the nightmare?" asked the Englishman suddenly.

"I? Oh yes, sometimes"; he looked curiously at his companion; "when I've
eaten too much, I get it."

"I always have it since I came up here," said the Englishman. "It is
that a vast world is resting on me--a whole globe: and I am a midge
beneath it. I try to raise it, and I cannot. So I lie still under
it--and let it crush me!"

"It's curious you should have the nightmare so up here," said the
Colonial; "one gets so little to eat."

There was a silence: he was picking the little fine feathers from the
bird, and the Englishman was watching the ants.

"Mind you," the Colonial said at last, "I don't say that in this case
the Captain was to blame; Halket made an awful ass of himself. He's
never been quite right since that time he got lost and spent the night
out on the kopje. When we found him in the morning he was in a kind of
dead sleep; we couldn't wake him; yet it wasn't cold enough for him to
have been frozen. He's never been the same man since; queer, you know;
giving his rations away to the coloured boys, and letting the other
fellows have his dot of brandy at night; and keeping himself sort of
apart to himself, you know. The other fellows think he's got a touch of
fever on, caught wandering about in the long grass that day. But I don't
think it's that; I think it's being alone in the veld that's got hold of
him. Man, have you ever been out like that, alone in the veld, night
and day, and not a soul to speak to? I have; and I tell you, if I'd been
left there three days longer I'd have gone mad or turned religious. Man,
it's the nights, with the stars up above you, and the dead still all
around. And you think, and think, and think! You remember all kinds of
things you've never thought of for years and years. I used to talk to
myself at last, and make believe it was another man. I was out seven
days: and he was only out one night. But I think it's the loneliness
that got hold of him. Man, those stars are awful; and that stillness
that comes toward morning!" He stood up. "It's a great pity, because
he's as good a fellow as ever was. But perhaps he'll come all right."