sing his invaliding out of the
country, he opened and read my report upon the way. But he was of those
who do not take kindly to invaliding. Who would run his machine-gun
section, if he were away, and his battalion in action? Who like he could
know the language and the little failings of his dusky machine-gun crew
that he had trained so long and so carefully in the Cameroon? So he
appeared in the books of the Stationary Hospital at Korogwe as an
ordinary case of convalescent malaria on his own statement. And when
they would send him still further back to M'buyuni he broke out from
hospital one night, and, with his native orderly, boarded the train to
Railhead and marched the other 200 miles to Morogoro. Here I met him on
the road starting out on the next long trek of 125 miles to Kissaki. For
news had come to him that the Gold Coast Regiment had been in action and
their impetuous courage rewarded by captured enemy guns and a long
casualty list. But he was determined and unrepentant, one of his beloved
machine-guns had been put out of action. How could I hold him back? So
joining forces with another white sergeant of his regiment, who was
hardly recovered from a wound, these two good fellows set out with a
note that, _this_ time, was not to be destroyed, for the instruction of
their regimental doctor.

A third scourge responsible for frequent admissions into hospital is
"tick-fever." Rather an unpleasant name, isn't it? And in its course and
effect it fully acts up to its reputation. More commonly known as
"relapsing fever," this illness attacks men who have been sleeping on
the floor of native huts, which in this country are swarming with these
parasites. Once in seven days for five or seven weeks these men burn
with high fever--higher and more violent even than malaria--but sooner
over. As you may imagine, it leaves them very debilitated; for no sooner
does the victim recover from one attack than another is due. The ticks
that are the host of the spirillum, the actual cause of the disease,
live in the soft earth on the floor of native huts at the junction of
the vertical cane rods and the soil. Here, by scraping, you may discover
hundreds of these loathsome beasts in every foot of wall. But they are
fortunately different from the grass ticks that, though unpleasant, are
not dangerous to man. For the tick that carries the spirillum is blind
and cannot climb any smooth surface. So to one sleeping on a bed or even
a nativ