.

"Damnation!" he swore under his breath, enraged that the servants should
have supplied him at the cost of the child; for he recalled the very
acceptable iced beer he had drunk in the jungles after a dangerous
exploit that had exhausted his energies and reduced him to a perspiring
rag of humanity, even though it was autumn.

The urgent need to find a scapegoat to suffer for this miserable muddle
sent him outside with a stride and malignant intentions at heart. Never
again while he toured with his family would he drink iced stimulants,
however damnably hot it was in the sun.

"What can I say?" whined the _bearer_ in indignant sympathy, cleverly
averting the storm he saw ready to descend on the head of the guilty.
"Such unusual heat for this time of the year, and that swine, the
carter, who is now many miles distant, left the ice-box on the sunny
side of the tent! Without sense is he, and possessed of a mind equal
only to that of a sheep. So much shade to be had, yet of a perversity
must he commit this brainless act! What can I do? Had this pair of hands
not been incessantly occupied in performing urgent tasks for the comfort
of the Memsahib, I might have cast eyes on the packing-case earlier, and
myself have removed it to safety. But alas! how much can one poor
servant do among so many who are idle and indifferent? So there it lay
out of sight and the water running freely through the joins till there
was one tank, and my bedding beside it, floating! Tonight I am without
bedding, but what of that? With the child ill, will any one care to
sleep?" He cast a triumphant eye around on a semicircle of admiring
fellow-servants who were envying him his resourcefulness and powers of
invention.

"Who sent ice with me into the jungles?" Meredith asked fiercely.

"Who, indeed, Image-of-God? Such an act of folly while the tender babe
lay sick is not to be forgiven. Peradventure, it was the mate-boy of the
cook who is of an imbecility past understanding, owing to his extreme
youth. Not even the intellect of a cow has he. _Urre bap!_ Did he not
leave at the Rest Bungalow----"

"Be silent, you talk too much," said Meredith. "Go and chastise him for
his interference. If I strike him I shall break every bone in his body.
Never again let ice be sent anywhere with me if it is likely to run
short at the camp, remember that," he said, impressing the fact on the
_bearer_, as he knew full well that, in the native mind, very little
impor