was covered by hair, for since we had started from
England I had allowed my naturally luxuriant beard to grow at its
own sweet will. But the other two were, comparatively speaking, clean
shaved, which of course gave the enemy a larger extent of open country
to operate on, though in Mahomed's case the mosquitoes, recognising the
taste of a true believer, would not touch him at any price. How often,
I wonder, during the next week or so did we wish that we were flavoured
like an Arab!

By the time that we had done laughing as heartily as our swollen lips
would allow, it was daylight, and the morning breeze was coming up from
the sea, cutting lanes through the dense marsh mists, and here and there
rolling them before it in great balls of fleecy vapour. So we set
our sail, and having first taken a look at the two dead lions and the
alligator, which we were of course unable to skin, being destitute of
means of curing the pelts, we started, and, sailing through the lagoon,
followed the course of the river on the farther side. At midday, when
the breeze dropped, we were fortunate enough to find a convenient piece
of dry land on which to camp and light a fire, and here we cooked two
wild-ducks and some of the waterbuck's flesh--not in a very appetising
way, it is true, but still sufficiently. The rest of the buck's flesh
we cut into strips and hung in the sun to dry into "biltong," as, I
believe, the South African Dutch call flesh thus prepared. On this
welcome patch of dry land we stopped till the following dawn, and, as
before, spent the night in warfare with the mosquitoes, but without
other troubles. The next day or two passed in similar fashion, and
without noticeable adventures, except that we shot a specimen of a
peculiarly graceful hornless buck, and saw many varieties of water-lily
in full bloom, some of them blue and of exquisite beauty, though few
of the flowers were perfect, owing to the prevalence of a white
water-maggot with a green head that fed upon them.

It was on the fifth day of our journey, when we had travelled, so far
as we could reckon, about one hundred and thirty-five to a hundred and
forty miles westwards from the coast, that the first event of any real
importance occurred. On that morning the usual wind failed us about
eleven o'clock, and after pulling a little way we were forced to halt,
more or less exhausted, at what appeared to be the junction of our
stream with another of a uniform width of abou