ff
continually and a wind sighed. I snuggled myself into my blanket and
waited for an hour. Then the sun gained possession of the sky.

I went down to the river, gathered sticks--they were very damp--and
made a fire. Once the fire began to burn it soon increased in size,
for I had gathered a great pile of little twigs and they soon dried
and burned. Then in their burning they dried bigger twigs, sticks,
cudgels, logs. I boiled my kettle and made tea.

Whilst I bathed in the river the sun gave a vision of his splendour: a
thousand mists trembled at his gaze. An hour later it was a very hot
day, and the village folk coming out of their houses could scarcely
have dreamed how reluctantly the night had retired at the dawn--with
what cold and damp the morning had begun.

IV

Another night, just after moonrise, a wind arose and drove in front
of it the whole night long a great thunderstorm, with lightnings and
rollings and grumblings and mutterings, but never a spot of rain. At
dawn, when I looked out to sea, I saw the whole dreadful array of the
storm standing to leeward like ships that had passed in the night, and
as though baulked in pursuit the roll of the thunder came across the
sky sullenly, though with a note of defeat.

The nights were often cold and wet, and it became necessary for me to
make my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On the
skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region
where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned of
the natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on
bark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At a
little settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logs
outside the village church. On this occasion I wrapped myself up in
all the clothes I possessed, and so saved myself from the damp. Next
morning, however, my blanket was so wet with dew that I could wring
it, though I had felt warm all night. I had always to guard against
the possibility of rain, and I generally made my couch in pleasant
proximity to some place of shelter--a bridge, a cave, or a house; and
more than once I had to abandon my grass bed in the very depth of the
night, and take up the alternative one in shelter.

V

A tremendous thunderstorm took place about a fortnight after I left
home. I had built a stick fire and was making tea for myself at the
end of a long cloudless summer day, and taking no care, w