The night was stormy and dark. The rain was falling, and the ground in Alec's camp was heavy with mud. The faithful Swahilis whom he had brought from the coast, with cold around their fires; and the shivered at their posts. It was a night that took the spirit out of a man and made all that he longed for seem vain and . In Alec's tent the water was streaming. Great rats ran about boldly. The canvas before each of wind, and the cordage creaked, so that one might have thought the whole thing would be blown clean away. The tent was unusually crowded, though there was in it nothing but Alec's bed, covered with a mosquito-curtain, a folding table, with a couple of garden chairs, and the cases which contained his more precious . A small on the floor as one walked on it.  
On one of the chairs a man sat, asleep, with his face resting on his arms. His gun was on the table in front of him. It was Walker, a young man who had been freshly sent out to take charge of the North East Africa Company's most northerly station, and had joined Alec's expedition a year before, taking the place of an older man who had gone home on leave. He was a funny, fat person with a round face and a comic manner, the most unexpected sort of fellow to find in the wildest of African districts; and he was unsuited for the life he led. He had come into a little money on his majority, and this he had set himself to in every unprofitable way that occurred to him. When his last penny was spent he had been offered a post by a friend of his family's, who happened to be a director of the company, and had accepted it as his only refuge from starvation. Adversity had not been able to affect his happy nature. He was always cheerful no matter what difficulties he was in, and neither regretted the of his past nor repined over the hardships which had followed them. Alec had taken a great to him. A silent man himself, he found a certain in people like Dick Lomas and Walker who talked ; and the young man's , his constant surprise at the difference between Africa and Mayfair, never ceased to divert him.
 
Presently Adamson came into the tent. He was the doctor who had already been Alec's companion on two of his expeditions; and there was a firm friendship between them. He was an Edinburgh man, with a slow drawl and a pawky humour, a great big fellow, far and away the largest of any of the whites; and his movements were no less deliberate than his conversation.
 
'Hulloa, there,' he called out, as he came in.
 
Walker started to his feet as if he were shot and seized his gun.
 
'All right!' laughed the doctor, putting up his hand. 'Don't shoot. It's only me.'
 
Walker put down the gun and looked at the doctor with a blank face.
 
'Nerves are a bit , aren't they?'
 
The fat, cheerful man recovered his wits and gave a short laugh.
 
'Why the dickens did you wake me up? I was dreaming—dreaming of a high-heeled boot and a neat ankle and the of a white lace petticoat.'
 
'Were you indeed?' said the doctor, with a slow smile. 'Then it's as well I woke ye up in the middle of it before ye made a fool of yourself. I thought I'd better have a look at your arm.'
 
'It's one of the most æsthetic sights I know.'
 
'Your arm?' asked the doctor, drily.
 
'No,' answered Walker. 'A pretty woman crossing Piccadilly at Swan & Edgar's. You are a , my good doctor, and a ; you don't know the care and forethought, the hours of anxious , it has needed to hold up that well-made skirt with the elegant grace that you.'
 
'I'm afraid you're a very man, Walker,' answered Adamson with his long drawl, smiling.
 
'Under the present circumstances I have to content myself with the behaviour of the and idle. Just now a camp-bed in a tent, with mosquitoes buzzing all around me, has greater than those of youth and beauty. And I would not sacrifice my dinner to with Helen of Troy herself.'
 
'You remind me of the fox who said the grapes were sour.'
 
Walker flung a tin plate at a rat that sat up on its legs and looked at him .
 
'Nonsense. Give me a comfortable bed to sleep in, plenty to eat, tobacco to smoke; and Amaryllis may go hang.'
 
Dr. Adamson smiled quietly. He found a certain grim humour in the contrast between the difficulties of their situation and Walker's flippant talk.
 
'Well, let us look at this wound of yours,' he said, getting back to his business. 'Has it been ?'
 
'Oh, it's not worth bothering about. It'll be as right as rain to-morrow.'
 
'I'd better dress it all the same.'
 
Walker took off his coat and rolled up his sleeve. The doctor removed the bandages and looked at the broad flesh wound. He put a fresh on it.
 
'It looks as healthy as one can expect,' he murmured. 'It's odd what good recoveries men make here when you'd think that everything was against them.'
 
'You must be pretty well done up, aren't you?' asked Walker, as he watched the doctor cut the .
 
'Just about dropping. But I've a devil of a lot more work to do before I turn in.'
 
'The thing that amuses me is to think that I came to Africa thinking I was going to have a good time, plenty of shooting and practically nothing to do.'
 
'You couldn't exactly describe it as a picnic, could you?' answered the doctor. 'But I don't suppose any of us knew it would be such a tough job as it's turned out.'
 
Walker put his disengaged hand on the doctor's arm.
 
'My friend, if ever I return to my native land I will never be such a and blithering idiot as to give way again to a spirit of adventure. I shall look out for something safe and quiet, and end my days as a wine-merchant's or an insurance agent.'
 
'Ah, that's what we all say when we're out here. But when we're once home again, the recollection of the forest and the plains and the roasting sun and the mosquitoes themselves, come haunting us, and before we know what's up we've booked our passage back to this God-forsaken continent.'
 
The doctor's words were followed by a silence, which was broken by Walker inconsequently.
 
'Do you ever think of rumpsteaks?' he asked.
 
The doctor stared at him blankly, and Walker went on, smiling.
 
'Sometimes, when we're marching under a sun that just about takes the roof of your head off, and we've had the and most uncomfortable breakfast possible, I have a vision.'
 
'I would be able to bandage you better if you only gesticulated with one arm,' said Adamson.
 
'I see the dining-room of my club, and myself seated at a little table by the window looking out on Piccadilly. And there's a spotless table-cloth, and all the accessories are spick and span. An menial brings me a rumpsteak, to perfection, and so tender that it melts in the mouth. And he puts by my side a plate of crisp fried potatoes. Can't you smell them? And then a liveried flunky brings me a pewter tankard, and into it he pours a bottle, a large bottle, mind you, of ale.'
 
'You've certainly added considerably to our cheerfulness, my friend,' said Adamson.
 
Walker his fat shoulders.
 
'I've often been driven to the of raging hunger with a careless epigram, and by the composition of a limerick I have sought to deceive a most unholy thirst.'
 
He liked that sentence and made up his mind to remember it for future use. The doctor paused for a moment, and then he looked gravely at Walker.
 
'Last night I thought that you'd made your last joke, old man; and that I had given my last dose of quinine.'
 
'We were in rather a tight corner, weren't we?'
 
'This is the third expedition I've been with MacKenzie, and I assure you I've never been so certain that all was over with us.'
 
Walker permitted himself a reflection.
 
'Funny thing death is, you know! When you think of it beforehand, it makes you squirm in your shoes, but when you've just got it face to face it seems so obvious that you forget to be afraid.'
 
Indeed it was only by a miracle that any of them was alive, and they had all a curious, light-headed feeling from the narrowness of the escape. They had been fighting, with their backs to the wall, and each one had shown what he was made of. A few hours before things had been so serious that now, in the first moment of relief, they sought refuge instinctively in . But Dr. Adamson was a solid man, and he wanted to talk the matter out.
 
'If the Arabs hadn't hesitated to attack us just those ten minutes, we would have been simply wiped out.'
 
'MacKenzie was all there, wasn't he?'
 
Walker had the shyness of his nationality in the exhibition of enthusiasm, and he could only express his for the commander of the party in terms of slang.
 
'He was, my son,' answered Adamson, drily. 'My own impression is, he thought we were done for.'
 
'What makes you think that?'
 
'Well, you see, I know him pretty well. When things are going and everything's flourishing, he's apt to be a bit . He keeps rather to himself, and he doesn't say much unless you do something he don't approve of.'
 
'And then, by Jove, he comes down on you like a thousand of bricks,' Walker agreed . He remembered observations which Alec on more than one occasion had made to recall him to a sense of his great . 'It's not for nothing the natives call him Thunder and Lightning.'
 
'But when things look black, his spirits go up like one o'clock,' proceeded the doctor. 'And the worse they are the more cheerful he is.'
 
'I know. When you're starving with hunger, dead tired and soaked to the skin, and wish you could just lie down and die, MacKenzie simply bubbles over with good humour. It's a hateful characteristic. When I'm in a bad temper, I much prefer everyone else to be in a bad temper, too.'
 
'These last three days he's been . Yesterday he was cracking jokes with the natives.'
 
'Scotch jokes,' said Walker. 'I daresay they sound funny in an African dialect.'
 
'I've never seen him more cheerful,' continued the other, sturdily ignoring the . 'By the Lord , said I to myself, the chief thinks we're in a devil of a bad way.'
 
Walker stood up and stretched himself lazily.
 
'Thank heavens, it's all over now. We've none of us had any sleep for three days, and when I once get off I don't mean to wake up for a we............