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And when the sun sank, and sudden darkness invaded Nature, said Cobby, thinking again of his Malay: "We might have done well to travel in our cab, which was as breezily speedy as the train is lazy. How long, Rolls, before the expedition actually starts out?"

Rolls said: "Three weeks, I reckon."

"Ah! three weeks.... Well, provided I am back in Fleet Street in a year—that is your undertaking."

Rolls' eyes twinkled. "No, not undertaking. You wait—you won't be so fidgety when Africa once gets its grip on you. Even this Karoo seems to you now a meaningless reach of plain, doesn't it?—no trees, nothing—yet it has a meaning of its own—says something, sings something. Hark! heard that cry? A riet-bok that is, out there in the vastness and darkness—never saw a train before: I know it from the way he whistled. He's living still away back in the bottomless pit of the geologic ages, that chap: all this Africa is. Wait till you see a geologic river washing solemn along, with the hippo's nostril snorting out in the choppy mid-channel: he's pretty old and knowing, that cove. But, of course, we'll be looking as lively as we know how: let's only hope we're not crossed and balked any road, for the enemy has a long arm. I'm all-out gallied now about not getting to see that sick man's face aboard. I wonder what's wrong with his mouth?—'inflamed mouth': never heard of that disease in man. I looked out at the landing, but no sign of him."