VIII MORE DISCOMFORT 109 
I spent an anxious and restless night after my 
hideous adventure, waking up each time I fell asleep 
with a nameless horror that only comes in a nightmare, 
the darkness seemed so terribly black, and the oppressive 
silence was only broken by the singing din of countless 
bands of mosquitoes fighting outside my net to gain an 
entrance ; the sense of loneliness stifled me, there was 
a breathless and oppressive heat in the small close 
room, my head throbbed as if it would burst, every 
bone ached, and I felt as if that demon fever had got 
hold of me again, and this added a fresh horror to the 
night. I got up then and chewed the leaves of a 
plant that the natives say will take this fever away. 
Whether it was this or not, I don’t know, but after a 
time nature triumphed over misery and I fell asleep. 
When daylight grim and gray filtered in at my window, 
my pains were gone, and, with a longing for a breath of 
fresh air, I got up, dressed and went out. Everything 
was still asleep and a misty gauze of smoky blue was 
just rising from the low grounds and river-bank. With 
the rising sun came life in every shape and form, the 
hum in the air of insect wings, butterflies with every 
rainbow colour. Birds sang and fluttered above and 
below, and now and then I was startled from my 
musings by the grunts and squeaks of common, lean, 
hungry-looking and preternaturally long-snouted pigs. 
After a painfully frugal meal I took my clothes 
down to the river to wash the salt water out of them, 
for the contents of my Gladstone bag had been 
saturated the day we landed, and everything had 
become sticky. The river was low and the mud bank 
so slippery that this was not such an easy amusement as 
I had thought, and, moreover, I rubbed all the skin off 
my two thumbs, which, combined with the heat and 
unwholesome food, made them very sore for several 
