“Set him on fire,” suggested Vereker.
“He’s too beastly wet, the sneak,” complained Gussie.
“Oah, he iss sleepee,” observed Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji.
Vereker regarded him almost with interest.
“What makes you think so?” he asked politely. In the laugh that followed, the sleeper was forgotten and remained where he was until Stand-to the following morning. He was living on quinine and his nerves—which form an insufficient diet in tropical Africa.
“Where Bwana sleeping to-night, sah, please Mister?” whispered Ali, as, dinner finished, Bertram sat listening with deep interest to the conversation.
Pipes alight, and glasses, mugs and condensed milk tins charged, the Mess was talking of all things most distant and different from jungle swamps and dirty, weary war. . . .
“Quite most ’sclusive Society in Oxford, I tell you,” Gussie was saying. “Called ourselves The Astronomers. . . .”
“What the devil for? Because you were generally out at night?” asked Macke.
“No—because we studied the Stars—of the Stage,” was the reply. . . .