“Oh, Lucky Jim!
How I envy him—”
resumed Jack Skelsey, while engaged in the above occupation.
“So do I, Jack, or anybody else to whom that word ‘lucky’ can be said to apply—and I’m afraid whoever that is it’ll never be us.”
“You never can tell, old man. Luck generally strikes a chap when least expected.”
“Then now’s the time for it to strike me; right now, Jack.”
“Oh, I don’t know we’ve much to grouse about, Spence. It’s beastly hot up here, and we’re sweating our souls out all for nothing. But after all, it’s better than being stuck away all one’s life in a musty old office, sometimes not even seeing the blessed light of day for a week at a time, if it happens to be foggy—a miserable jet of gas the only substitute for yonder jolly old sun. Rather! I’ve tried it and you haven’t. See?”
Nobody could have looked upon that simple camp without thoroughly agreeing with the speaker. It was hot certainly, but there were trees which afforded a cool and pleasant shade: while around for many a mile stretched a glorious roll of bush veldt—all green and golden in the unclouded sunlight—and the chatter of monkeys, the cackle of the wild guinea-fowl, the shrill crow of the bush pheasant together with the gleam of bright-winged birds glancing overhead, bespoke that this beautiful wilderness was redundant with life. The two men lounging there, with bronzed races and chests, their shirtsleeves turned up from equally bronzed wrists, looked the picture of rude health: surely if ever there was such a thing as a free life—open—untrammelled—this was it.
The day was Sunday, which may account for the lazy way in which we found one at any rate of the pair, spending the morning. For they had made it a rule to do no work on that day, not, we fear, from any particularly religious motive, but acting on the thoroughly sound and wholesome plan of taking one day in seven “off.” A thoroughly sound and wholesome appetite had they too. When they had done, Skelsey remarked:
“Shall we go and have a shoot?”
The other, who was tugging at a knot in the strings of his tobacco bag, looked up quickly.