I was the man, and naturally he would
say to his friends, "Look you at that man over there--wouldn't think he
had lost half his head with a pom-pom shell would you? but he did, and I
mended it!--It's pretty well done, isn't it? You can hardly see a mark."

[11] At Battle of Houtneck.

... Then evening service in a tiny church, a quiet, monotonous, gently
murmured lesson, and a few verses from the Old Testament about
sanguinary battles long ago and exemplary Hebrew warriors--how soothing!
Doors and windows are wide open, and moths fly in and round the lamps
from the blue night outside. The air is full of the rattle of the
cicada, which is like the sound of a loud cricket, or the 'r--r' of a
corncraik's note going on for ever and ever; and the house lizard in the
church goes cheep--cheep--cheep every now and then. No one pays any
attention to its loud sweet note. Rather pretty Eurasian girls play the
organ and sing, and look through their fingers as they pray.

Then we are dismissed, and find ourselves out in the dark, and the
longed for rain falling very lightly. The white dressed native servants
are there with lamps and bring up the bullock carts, and ladies go off
in them with the harness bells aringing. We have "The Victoria" of the
station--and faith, barring the exercise, I'd as soon not walk! Did not
Mr H. kill a great Russell viper at the club steps last night, and was
not bitten, and so is alive to tell the tale to-day and to-morrow, and
to show the skin, three feet long with a chain pattern down the back;
the beast!--it won't get out of your path; lies to be trodden on, then
turns and bites you, and you're dead in three minutes by the clock.

... To-day, Tuesday--could read a little--temperature down. Found it an
entertainment listening to the voices of various callers in the centre
hall of the bungalow, of which one half forms the drawing-room, the
other half the dining-room. The bedroom doors open into this, and these
doors are a foot off the ground, and fail to meet the top of the arches
above them by about other two feet. The advantage of this I fail to see,
further than that a convalescent or any other person who can't be
bothered talking, can if he pleases, listen to others conversing; if,
however, he prefers to sleep, he can't!

I got a glimpse of the gaily dressed callers through the transparent
purdahs that separate my room on the outside from the verandah. They
drove in white dumbies with white bu