AFRICAN CAMP FIRES 



this peculiar effect, of a strong breeze on your naked 

 skin without even the faintest surface chillysensation. 

 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, 

 as with us in our temperate 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 

 lounging against the rail looking out over a molten 

 sea. The moonlight lies in patterns across the deck, 

 shivering slightly under the throb of the engines, or 

 occasionally swaying slowly forward or slowly back 

 as the ship'scourse changes, but otherwise motionless, 

 for here the sea is always calm. You raise your head, 

 look about, sprawl in a new position on your mattress, 

 fall asleep. On one of these occasions you find 

 unexpectedly that the velvet-gray night has become 

 steel-gray dawn; and that the kindly old quarter- 



M 



