stone with his
carbine at the "support," or to tramp up and down by the horse-lines,
armed only with his cutting-whip; to stand in a sentry-box while the
rain fell in sheets and there was no telling what the next flash of
lightning might reveal--that was what would send him to a lunatic's
padded cell.

To see the Snake by day would give him a cruel, terrible fit--but to
be aware of it in the dark would be final--and fatal to his reason
(which was none too firmly enthroned). No, he had the dreadful feeling
that his reason was none too solidly based and fixed. He had horrible
experiences, apart from the snake-nightmares, nowadays. One night when
he awoke and lay staring up at his mosquito-curtain in the blessed
light of the big room-lamp (always provided in India on account of
rifle thieves) he had suddenly felt an overwhelming surge of fear. He
sat up. God!--he was in a marble box! These white walls and roof were
not mosquito-netting, they were solid marble! He was in a tomb. He was
buried alive. The air was growing foul. His screams would be
absolutely inaudible. He screamed, and struck wildly at the cold cruel
marble, and found it was soft, yielding netting after all. But it was
a worse horror to find that he had thought it marble than if he had
found it to be marble. He sprang from his cot.

"I am going mad," he cried.

"Goin'?... _Gorn_, more like," observed the disrobing room-corporal.
"Why donchew keep orf the booze, Maffewson? You silly gapin' goat. Git
inter bed and shut yer 'ead--or I'll get yew a night in clink, me
lad--and wiv'out a light, see?"

Corporal Prag knew his victim's little weakness and grinned
maliciously as Dam sprang into bed without a word.

The Stone Jug without a gleam of light! Could a man choke himself with
his own fingers if the worst came to the worst? The Digger and Stygian
darkness--now--_when he was going mad_! Men could not be so cruel....
But they'd say he was drunk. He would lie still and cling with all his
strength and heart and soul to sanity. He would think of That Evening
with Lucille--and of her kisses. He would recite the Odes of Horace,
the Aeneid, the Odyssey as far as he could remember them, and then
fall back on Shakespeare and other English poets. Probably he knew a
lot more Greek and Latin poetry (little as it was) than he did of
English....

Corporal Prag improved the occasion as he unlaced his boots. "Bloomin'
biby! Afraid o' the dark! See wot boozin' brings yer