42 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



the sweltering inferno of your cabin, only to 

 reappear likewise with a steward and a mattress. 

 The latter, if you are wise, you spread where 

 the wind of the ship's going will be full upon 

 you. It is a strong wind and blows upon you 

 heavily, so that the sleeves and legs of your 

 pyjamas flop, but it is a soft, warm wind, and 

 beats you as with muffled fingers. In no tem- 

 perate clime can you ever enjoy this peculiar 

 effect of a strong breeze on your naked skin 

 without even the faintest surface chilly sensation. 

 So habituated has one become to feeling cooler 

 in a draught that the absence of chill lends the 

 night an unaccustomedness, the more weird in 

 that it is unanalyzed, so that one feels definitely 

 that one is in a strange, far country. This is 

 intensified by the fact that in these latitudes the 

 moon, the great, glorious, calm tropical moon, 

 is directly overhead follows the centre line of the 

 zenith instead of being, as with us in our tem- 

 perate zone, always more or less declined to the 

 horizon. This, too, lends the night an exotic 

 quality, the more effective in that at first the 

 reason for it is not apprehended. 



A night in the tropics is always more or less 

 broken. One awakens, and sleeps again. Motion- 

 less white-clad figures, cigarettes glowing, are 



