IN A FISHING COUNTRY 



the frowning steeps; wondering much 

 whose eye might next fall upon them, and 

 what tale he would have to tell. Should 

 it be better worth the hearing than ours, he 

 will, if wise in the ways of fish, render to 

 Chance her proper dues. 



A great congregation of mosquitos, 

 eager to risk their lives for the single drop 

 of blood nature bade them demand of us, 

 was gathered in the tent, but we discon- 

 certed them and won a blinding choking 

 kind of peace with a smoke-screen hatched 

 in a lard tin. The last care before turn- 

 ing in was to replenish the smoulder, and 

 gather a store of punky wood against the 

 evil hour. Earliest dawn brought the 

 enemy back, incredibly reinforced. The 

 smudge was dead; the lard tin vanished; 

 almost one suspected that the mosquitos, in 

 a fine collective efifort, had made away with 

 the engine of their discomfiture. A long 

 groping disclosed that the young man, 

 head tucked under blanket, was grappling 

 the fire-pot to his bosom. He yielded it 

 sleepily; a cloud of full-flavoured incense 

 gradually reduced the clamour of wings to 

 silence. But sleep was fitful and shallow, 

 as it is likely to be when excessive fatigue 

 has begotten nerve-irritating toxins. The 

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