We crossed the Lundi, and somewhere beyond where one of their worst nights was passed we outspanned in peace and security, and gossiped over the ruins of ancient temples and the graves of modern pioneers. There were half a dozen of us, and we lay round the fire in lazy silence, too content to speak, simply living and drinking in the indescribable glories of an ideal African night.
It was someone knocking his pipe out and asking for the tobacco that broke the long silence, and the old Barbertonian, who had had to move to release the tobacco, looked round with the air of wanting someone to talk to. As no one gave any sign, he asked presently:
“Are you chaps asleep?”
“No!” came in clear, wakeful voices, with various degrees of promptness.
“I was just thinking,” he said, refilling his pipe slowly, “that this sort of thing—a night like this, you know, and all that—although it seems perfection to us, isn’t really so perfect after all. It all depends on the point of view, you know. A night like this must be a perfect curse to a lion or a tiger, you know.”
“Your sympathies are too wide, old man,” said the surveyor. “Chuck me a light, and console yourself that your predatory friends do well enough when others are miserable. Take a more human view.”
“If you want an outlet for your native sympathy, you might heave me out a cushion,” suggested another. “I’ve made a pillow of a bucket, and got a dent in my head. The thick cushion, old boy, and I’m with you so far as to say that the lions have a jolly hard time of it with so much fine weather.”
The Barbertonian lighted up his pipe and threw the cushion at the last speaker.
“H’m!” he grunted between puffs. “I was really thinking of it from quite a human standpoint—the view of that poor devil who got lost here two months ago. Now, he couldn’t have thought much of nights like these. Do you think he mused on their beauty!”
“Oh, I heard something of him,” said one. “Lost for forty days in the wilderness, wasn’t he? I remember. The coincidence struck me as peculiar.”