back a step or two to observe the effect.  It was not satisfactory, so he shut up the bag, turned it on end, and, having rested it against the foot of the couch, placed the dressing-case on it.  Next he looked at the pots full of water, which constituted our washing apparatus.  “Ah!” I heard him murmur, “no hot water in this beastly place.  I suppose these poor creatures only use it to boil each other in,” and he sighed deeply.

“What is the matter, Job?” I said.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, touching his hair.  “I thought you were asleep, sir; and I am sure you seem as though you want it.  One might think from the look of you that you had been having a night of it.”

I only groaned by way of answer.  I had, indeed, been having a night of it, such as I hope never to have again.

“How is Mr. Leo, Job?”

“Much the same, sir.  If he don’t soon mend, he’ll end, sir; and that’s all about it; though I must say that that there savage, Ustane, do do her best for him, almost like a baptised Christian.  She is always hanging round and looking after him, and if I ventures to interfere it’s awful to see her; her hair seems to stand on end, and she curses and swears away in her heathen talk—­at least I fancy she must be cursing, from the look of her.”

“And what do you do then?”

“I make her a perlite bow, and I say, ’Young woman, your position is one that I don’t quite understand, and can’t recognise.  Let me tell you that I has a duty to perform to my master as is incapacitated by illness, and that I am going to perform it until I am incapacitated too,’ but she don’t take no heed, not she—­only curses and swears away worse than ever.  Last night she put her hand under that sort of night-shirt she wears and whips out a knife with a kind of a curl in the blade, so I whips out my revolver, and we walks round and round each other till at last she bursts out laughing.  It isn’t nice treatment for a Christian man to have to put up with from a savage, however handsome she may be, but it is what people must expect as is fools enough” (Job laid great emphasis on the “fools”) “to come to such a place to look for things no man is meant to find.  It’s a judgment on us, sir—­that’s my view; and I, for one, is of opinion that the judgment isn’t half done yet, and when it is done we shall be done too, and just stop in these beastly caves with the ghosts and the corpseses for once and all.  And now, sir, I must be seeing about Mr. Leo’s broth, if that wild cat will let me; and, perhaps, you would like to get up, sir, because it’s past nine o’clock.”