s he saw the boys' faces drop.
"We have got the advantage of position, and we've got grit--eh?"

He nodded cheerfully, and they smiled back, and then each crept out
to his allotted post. The first part of the watch was by no means
bad--so the boys decided when they had settled down, Venning under a
bush palm and Compton behind a log. There was a pleasant freshness
in the air; and as the broad river uncoiled under the mist, it
disclosed fresh beauties, till the lifting veil revealed the wooded
heights and the tall columns of smoke, grey against the dark of the
woods and black against the indigo blue of the sky. They marked
where the hippos stood with their bulky heads to the sun, and saw
the crocodiles on the sands of other islands lying motionless with
distended jaws. And then the birds came to the hunting. Strings of
dark ibis, of duck, and storks; small kingfishers all bejeweled, and
greater kingfishers in black and white. The air was full of bird-
calls, of the musical ripple of waters, of the hum of the forest
moved by the morning wind.

By-and-by, however, the sun got to work in earnest, and the pleasure
went out of the watching as the air grew hot and steamy. The sand-
flies and the mosquitoes found them out, and blessed the day that
brought two tender white boys into their very midst. They gathered
to the feast in clouds, but these boys were not there for the fun of
the thing. They drew gossamer veils over the brims of their felt
hats, and gathered them in about their necks. They pulled their soft
high boots up to their knees and secured them there; and, moreover,
they smeared an abomination of grease and eucalyptus oil over their
hands. The mosquitoes set up a shrill trumpeting that could be heard
ten paces away, and held a mass meeting to protest; whereupon the
father of all the dragon-flies, a magnificent warrior in a steel-
blue armour, saw that a conspiracy was afoot, and swept into the
midst with a whirr and a snap, a turn here and a flash there, that
scattered the host in a twinkling of a gnat's eye.

The islands shimmered in the glare as if they were afloat; the
hippos took to the water, and a deep and drowsy silence fell upon
the great river. But man, ever restless, was astir, and through the
stillness there was borne to the three a soft continuous humming,
that merged quietly into the short, clamorous throbs of an engine at
work under pressure.

The launch was afloat again! Mr. Hume caught the trai