of the Gladstone bag, and opened it
ready for my use. First he stood it on the foot of the couch also, then,
being afraid, I suppose, that I should kick it off, he placed it on a
leopard skin on the floor, and stood back a step or two to observe the
effect. It was not satisfactory, so he shut up the bag, turned it on
end, and, having rested it against the foot of the couch, placed the
dressing-case on it. Next he looked at the pots full of water, which
constituted our washing apparatus. "Ah!" I heard him murmur, "no hot
water in this beastly place. I suppose these poor creatures only use it
to boil each other in," and he sighed deeply.

"What is the matter, Job?" I said.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, touching his hair. "I thought you were
asleep, sir; and I am sure you seem as though you want it. One might
think from the look of you that you had been having a night of it."

I only groaned by way of answer. I had, indeed, been having a night of
it, such as I hope never to have again.

"How is Mr. Leo, Job?"

"Much the same, sir. If he don't soon mend, he'll end, sir; and that's
all about it; though I must say that that there savage, Ustane, do
do her best for him, almost like a baptised Christian. She is always
hanging round and looking after him, and if I ventures to interfere it's
awful to see her; her hair seems to stand on end, and she curses and
swears away in her heathen talk--at least I fancy she must be cursing,
from the look of her."

"And what do you do then?"

"I make her a perlite bow, and I say, 'Young woman, your position is one
that I don't quite understand, and can't recognise. Let me tell you that
I has a duty to perform to my master as is incapacitated by illness,
and that I am going to perform it until I am incapacitated too,' but
she don't take no heed, not she--only curses and swears away worse than
ever. Last night she put her hand under that sort of night-shirt she
wears and whips out a knife with a kind of a curl in the blade, so I
whips out my revolver, and we walks round and round each other till at
last she bursts out laughing. It isn't nice treatment for a Christian
man to have to put up with from a savage, however handsome she may be,
but it is what people must expect as is _fools_ enough" (Job laid great
emphasis on the "fools") "to come to such a place to look for things no
man is meant to find. It's a judgment on us, sir--that's my view; and I,
for one, is of opinion that the judgm