“Good-night,” said Speed, thoughtfully. “I’ll join you in a moment.”
When I was ready for bed and stood at the tent door, peering out into the darkness, I saw Speed curled up on a blanket between the elephant’s forefeet, sound asleep.
XII
JACQUELINE
The stars were still shining when I awoke in my blanket, lighted a candle, and stepped into the wooden tub of salt-water outside the tent.
I shaved by candle-light, dressed in my worn riding-breeches and jacket, then, candle in hand, began groping about among the faded bits of finery and tarnished properties until I found the silver-scaled swimming-tights once worn by the girl of whom we had heard so much.
She was very young when she leaped to her death in Antwerp—a slim slip of a creature, they said—so I thought it likely that her suit might fit Jacqueline.
The stars had begun to fade when I stepped out through the dew-soaked clover, carrying in one hand a satchel containing the swimming-suit, in the other a gun-case, in which, carefully oiled and doubly cased in flannel, reposed my only luxury—my breech-loading shot-gun.