During this work she had been careful not to forget the fire at the tree. Yet when, near sundown, she called the others to the third meal of leopard meat, Blake grumbled at the tree for being what he termed such a confounded tough proposition.
“Good thing there’s lots of wood here, Win,” he added. “We’ll keep this fire going till the blamed thing topples over, if it takes a year.”
“Oh, but you surely will not stay so far from the baobab to-night!” exclaimed Miss Leslie.
“Hold hard!” soothed Blake. “You’ve no license to get the jumps yet a while. We’ll have another fire by the baobab. So you needn’t worry.”
A few minutes later they went back to the baobab, and Winthrope began helping Miss Leslie to construct a bamboo screen in the narrow entrance of the tree-cave, while Blake built the second fire.
As Winthrope was unable to tell time by the stars, Blake took the first watch. At sunset, following the engineer’s advice, Winthrope lay down with his feet to the small watch-fire, and was asleep before twilight had deepened into night. Fagged out by the mental and bodily stress of the day, he slept so soundly that it seemed to him he had hardly lost consciousness when he was roused by a rough hand on his forehead.
“What is it?” he mumbled.
“’Bout one o’clock,” said Blake. “Wake up! I ran overtime, ’cause the morning watch is the toughest. But I can’t keep ’wake any longer.”
“I say, this is a beastly bore,” remarked Winthrope, sitting up.
“Um-m,” grunted Blake, who was already on his back.