ne never
noticed at home?"

"I don't know. Perhaps we should have heard some of these ticks and
squeaks and rustlings if we had lain awake. I say, Ned, I believe all
the wild things from round about are coming to see what we want here."

"Very likely. What's that?"

"What?"

"That flash of light. Is it a storm coming?"

"Pooh! No. Father threw some bits of dry stuff on the fire."

"To be sure. But I say, Chris, that's why all these insects and things
come creeping up. It's the light that attracts them."

"Of course it is. I wish you'd go to sleep."

"I will as soon as I can, but you needn't be so disagreeable."

"Enough to make me. I'm tired, and you keep on talking like an old
woman. Not frightened, are you?"

"Nonsense! No. Ugh!"

Ned started up, his action following the ejaculation belying his words,
for all of a sudden from near at hand came a dull thud as if a heavy
blow had been struck, followed by what sounded in Ned's ears like a
shriek of agony. "What's that?" he gasped.

"One mule tried to bite another in the back, had a kick for his pains,
and called `Murder!' in mulese," said Chris sourly. "I say, I shall
have a bed-room to myself to-morrow night if you're going on like this."

Ned was silent, for his companion's words rankled.

"Perhaps I ought to have known," he said, "but it's all so strange lying
out here in the darkness."

He turned over on the other side, determined to sleep now, and he tried
hard for quite a quarter of an hour, the effort seeming to make him more
wakeful than ever, for his senses were all upon the strain, while as the
night progressed fresh noises, some of them quite peculiar, seemed to
arise. Once he started, for there was a heavy splash which in the clear
air sounded quite near, but which was evidently from the lagoon; and it
put to flight an idea he had been nursing up of going down to the sheet
of water and ridding himself of his hot tickling clothes so as to have a
good swim before breakfast. That was all over now, for that splash told
of alligators swimming in the lagoon to his heated imagination. He had
never heard of the reptiles existing in that part of the country, but he
knew that there were plenty in the swamps farther to the south, and
there was no reason why there might not be some in the wild districts
into which they were plunging.

Another splashing noise succeeded, and he felt that it might have been
made by a fish, and others wh