I noticed. They both looked rather bored.

Soon I pressed on, with fifteen miles or so to cover before our
camping-place would be reached.

I had gone some ten miles before the construction train passed
me, and my carriers pressed through bushes and long grass for a
nearer view of it.

With three or four white men on the engine, a Black Watch or two
and a few other natives on the trucks, it snorted along through
the woodland. As the night deepened and the moon rose, we came
close to the last coach-stable, and were soon encamped.

The old Basuto near by gave me a drink of fairish water, but
water was far away, I was told. My boys straggled away wearily,
and came back at last, having seemingly missed the dipping-place.
They had brought something between a liquid and a solid. Boiled,
it was no doubt wholesome enough, but its taste was not such as
to tempt to excess.

That night I dreamed, with a tag of Marvell's speech buzzing in
my head (I had garrisoned it with quinine before I slept). That
tag rang out in boastful refrain like the natives' curfew-bell of
Alexandra, a bell not always very punctually rung. 'We are in at
the death of malaria, of black-water, and of horse-sickness.'

So clanged the bell, the bell in the market tower, the tower of
the dismantled pioneer fort. And it seemed to me that I saw
Malaria a lean yellow ague-shaken shape with a Cape-boy sort of
face, steal away out of the town past the new Railway Station,
and across the river. He went, like a frightened Kaffir dog with
a jackal-like yelp, far away into the Veld. I am not sure whether
he did not become canine on the way, at least cynocephalous. I
followed him. I went far in that following, over country that I
remember as very difficult, there were so many stumps of trees
about. Moreover, it had abundance of black-jacks to stud one's
socks with. 'He is going through dry places seeking rest,' I
thought. 'Soon he will return.' And sure enough we were to return
by-and by. And a jackal pack of seven, that I was somehow
expecting to come, came with us. We saw the lights of Alexandra
soon, but the people had gone to bed, it seemed. There was no one
about anywhere. Then the leading jackal fed foul and lapped long
at a great black drain. Afterwards he howled under a window of
the Hospital, and leaped through it, straddling his legs. Then I
awoke.

I married Marvell on the following Monday, and partook of his
wedding-lunch. He made a far more flore