The nights were often cold and wet, and it became necessary for me to make my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth.  On the skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires.  I learned of the natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on bark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground.  At a little settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logs outside the village church.  On this occasion I wrapped myself up in all the clothes I possessed, and so saved myself from the damp.  Next morning, however, my blanket was so wet with dew that I could wring it, though I had felt warm all night.  I had always to guard against the possibility of rain, and I generally made my couch in pleasant proximity to some place of shelter—­a bridge, a cave, or a house; and more than once I had to abandon my grass bed in the very depth of the night, and take up the alternative one in shelter.

V

A tremendous thunderstorm took place about a fortnight after I left home.  I had built a stick fire and was making tea for myself at the end of a long cloudless summer day, and taking no care, when suddenly I looked up to the sky and saw the evening turning swiftly to night before my eyes.  The sun was not due to set, but the western horizon seemed as it were to have risen and gone forth to meet it.  A great black bank of cloud had come up out of the west and hidden away the sun before his time.

I hastened to put my tea things into my pack and take to the road, for it was necessary to find a convenient night place.  In a quarter of an hour it was night.  At regular intervals all along the road were the brightly lit lamps of glow-worms; they looked like miniature street lights, the fitting illumination of a road mostly occupied by hedgehogs.

I found a dry resting-place under a tree and laid myself out to sleep, watching the moon who had just risen perfectly, out of the East; but I had hardly settled myself when I was surprised by a gleam of lightning.  Turning to the west, I saw the vast array of cloud that had overtaken the sun, coming forward into the night—­eclipsing the sky.

A storm?  Would it reach me?  My wishes prompted comforting answers and I lay and stared at the sky, trying to find reassurance.  I did not feel inclined to stir, but the clouds came on ominously.  I marked out a bourne across the wide sky and resolved that if the shadow crept past certain bright planets in the north, south, and centre, I would take it as a sign, repack my wraps, and seek shelter in a farm-house.  But the clouds came on and on.  Slowly but surely the great army advanced and the lightnings became more frequent.  My sky-line was passed.  I rose sorrowfully, put all my things in the knapsack, and took the road once again.