t and the flies!"

Durant wondered if after all it had been a kindness to call back the
passing spirit that had begun to forget.

* * * * *

Slowly the scorching day wore away, till evening descended in a blaze of
gorgeous colouring upon the desolate African wilderness and the band of
men that had been surrounded and cut off by a wily enemy.

They were expecting relief. Hourly they expected it, but, being hampered
by a score of wounded, it was not possible for them to break through the
thickly populated scrub unassisted. And they had no water.

A stream flowed, brown and sluggish, not more than a hundred yards below
the camp. But that same stream was flanked on the farther side by a
long, black line of thicket that poured forth fire upon any man who
ventured out from behind the great rocks that protected the camp.

It had been attempted again and again, for the needs of the wounded were
desperate. But each effort had been disastrous, and at last an order had
gone forth that no man was to expose himself again to this deadly risk.

So, silent behind their entrenchments, with the hospital tent in their
midst, the British force had to endure the situation, waiting with a
dogged patience for the coming of their comrades who could not be far
away.

Regal to the last, the sun sank away in orange and gold; and night,
burning, majestic, shimmering, spread over a cloudless sky. A full moon
floated up behind dense forest trees, and shed a glimmering radiance
everywhere. The heat did not seem to vary by a breath.

A great restlessness spread like a wave through the hospital tent. Men
waked from troubled slumber, crying aloud like children, piteously,
unreasoningly, for water.

The doctor went from one to another, restraining, soothing, reassuring.
His influence made itself felt, and quiet returned; but it was a quiet
that held no peace; it was the silent gripping of an agony that was
bound to overcome.

Again and again through the crawling hours the bitter protest broke out
afresh, like the crying of souls in torment. One or two became delirious
and had to be forcibly restrained from struggling forth in search of
that which alone could still their torture.

Durant was too fully occupied with these raving patients of his to spare
any attention for the bed in the far corner on which they had laid the
one man whose injuries were mortal. If he thought of the man at all, it
was to reflect tha