Rowe, the lion hunter, told Benham that only on one occasion in his life had he given way to ungovernable fear, and that was when he was alone.  Many times he had been in fearful situations in the face of charging lions and elephants, and once he had been bowled over and carried some distance by a lion, but on none of these occasions had fear demoralized him.  There was no question of his general pluck.  But on one occasion he was lost in rocky waterless country in Somaliland.  He strayed out in the early morning while his camels were being loaded, followed some antelope too far, and lost his bearings.  He looked up expecting to see the sun on his right hand and found it on his left.  He became bewildered.  He wandered some time and then fired three signal shots and got no reply.  Then losing his head he began shouting.  He had only four or five more cartridges and no water-bottle.  His men were accustomed to his going on alone, and might not begin to remark upon his absence until sundown. . . .  It chanced, however, that one of the shikari noted the water-bottle he had left behind and organized a hunt for him.

Long before they found him he had passed to an extremity of terror.  The world had become hideous and threatening, the sun was a pitiless glare, each rocky ridge he clambered became more dreadful than the last, each new valley into which he looked more hateful and desolate, the cramped thorn bushes threatened him gauntly, the rocks had a sinister lustre, and in every blue shadow about him the night and death lurked and waited.  There was no hurry for them, presently they would spread out again and join and submerge him, presently in the confederated darkness he could be stalked and seized and slain.  Yes, this he admitted was real fear.  He had cracked his voice, yelling as a child yells.  And then he had become afraid of his own voice. . . .

“Now this excess of fear in isolation, this comfort in a crowd, in support and in a refuge, even when support or refuge is quite illusory, is just exactly what one would expect of fear if one believed it to be an instinct which has become a misfit.  In the ease of the soldier fear is so much a misfit that instead of saving him for the most part it destroys him.  Raw soldiers under fire bunch together and armies fight in masses, men are mowed down in swathes, because only so is the courage of the common men sustained, only so can they be brave, albeit spread out and handling their weapons as men of unqualified daring would handle them they would be infinitely safer and more effective. . . .

“And all of us, it may be, are restrained by this misfit fear from a thousand bold successful gestures of mind and body, we are held back from the attainment of mighty securities in pitiful temporary shelters that are perhaps in the end no better than traps. . . .”