'I've often been driven to appease the pangs of raging hunger with a careless epigram, and by the laborious composition of a limerick I have sought to deceive a most unholy thirst.'
He liked that sentence and made up his mind to remember it for future use. The doctor paused for a moment, and then he looked gravely at Walker.
'Last night I thought that you'd made your last joke, old man; and that I had given my last dose of quinine.'
'We were in rather a tight corner, weren't we?'
'This is the third expedition I've been with MacKenzie, and I assure you I've never been so certain that all was over with us.'
Walker permitted himself a philosophical reflection.
'Funny thing death is, you know! When you think of it beforehand, it makes you squirm in your shoes, but when you've just got it face to face it seems so obvious that you forget to be afraid.'
Indeed it was only by a miracle that any of them was alive, and they had all a curious, light-headed feeling from the narrowness of the escape. They had been fighting, with their backs to the wall, and each one had shown what he was made of. A few hours before things had been so serious that now, in the first moment of relief, they sought refuge instinctively in banter. But Dr. Adamson was a solid man, and he wanted to talk the matter out.
'If the Arabs hadn't hesitated to attack us just those ten minutes, we would have been simply wiped out.'
'MacKenzie was all there, wasn't he?'