rown. The officers' clean shirts as was washed
in that water--haw, haw, haw!--What's that?"

The listener brought his piece to the ready, and the _click, click_ of
the lock followed instantly upon a shrill cry which seemed to thrill the
sentry along every nerve.

"Is it the crocs?" he thought; and then close upon the distant sound of
blows and a splash or two came in Archie's well-known but now excited
tones:

"Sentry Pegg! Help!"

The young private obeyed his first instinct, and that was, instead of
firing, to give the alarm, to run down as fast as he could to the
water's edge and plunge in amongst the scattered, overhanging trees,
making as well as he could judge for the direction from which the cries
had arisen.

"Here! Coming! Coming!" he panted, as he rushed in where the trees
were thickest, to become, directly after, conscious of a figure starting
up from behind a bush that he had just passed, and from which,
glittering and flashing, came the sparkle of quite a little cloud of
fire-flies.

The lad swung himself round as he scented danger, and struck back with
the butt of his rifle; but it was only to miss his assailant and expose
his head to a blow from the other side--so heavy a stroke from a
formidable, club-like weapon that he dropped, with a faint groan, while
from the direction of the boat right out towards the middle of the river
there was a resumption of the plashing of poles.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A STRANGE FEVER.

It was to Archie Maine like a bad attack of the fever from which he had
suffered when he first went up-country in the gunboat from Singapore.
There was that horrible beating and throbbing in his head, only
intensely more confusing than it had been then; and sometimes, when he
could think and everything did not seem mentally upside-down, he was
being puzzled by two questions. One was, "Is it jungle fever?" the
other, "Is it the throbbing and beating of the gunboat engines?" And
this latter he favoured the more because he felt convinced that the
heat, the burning, scorching heat, in his head must be because they had
put him in a berth close by the furnace fires.

Throb, throb--burn, burn--and then all nothingness for long enough. He
could not move; he could not speak; he could not think; only hour after
hour in the midst of the throbbing pain he felt dried up, choking with
thirst, and always fighting hard to get back the power to think.

What did it all mean? Where was he?