’Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on the sextant to keep it cool,’ said the man of the survey.  ’Washing my eyes to avoid ophthalmia, which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a sub-surveyor understand that an error of five degrees in an angle isn’t quite so small as it looks.  I’m altogether alone, y’ know, and shall be till the end of the hot weather.’

‘Hummil’s the lucky man,’ said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long chair.  ’He has an actual roof—­torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but still a roof—­over his head.  He sees one train daily.  He can get beer and soda-water and ice ’em when God is good.  He has books, pictures,—–­they were torn from the Graphic,—­’and the society of the excellent sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.’

Hummil smiled grimly.  ’Yes, I’m the lucky man, I suppose.  Jevins is luckier.’

‘How?  Not——­’

‘Yes.  Went out.  Last Monday.’

‘By his own hand?’ said Spurstow quickly, hinting the suspicion that was in everybody’s mind.  There was no cholera near Hummil’s section.  Even fever gives a man at least a week’s grace, and sudden death generally implied self-slaughter.

‘I judge no man this weather,’ said Hummil.  ’He had a touch of the sun, I fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the verandah and told me that he was going home to see his wife, in Market Street, Liverpool, that evening.

’I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie down.  After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he had had a fit,—­hoped he hadn’t said anything rude.  Jevins had a great idea of bettering himself socially.  He was very like Chucks in his language.’

‘Well?’

’Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle.  He told the servant that he was going to shoot buck in the morning.  Naturally he fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the head—­ accidentally.  The apothecary sent in a report to my chief, and Jevins is buried somewhere out there.  I’d have wired to you, Spurstow, if you could have done anything.’

‘You’re a queer chap,’ said Mottram.  ’If you’d killed the man yourself you couldn’t have been more quiet about the business.’

‘Good Lord! what does it matter?’ said Hummil calmly.  ’I’ve got to do a lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own.  I’m the only person that suffers.  Jevins is out of it,—­by pure accident, of course, but out of it.  The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide.  Trust a babu to drivel when he gets the chance.’

‘Why didn’t you let it go in as suicide?’ said Lowndes.

’No direct proof.  A man hasn’t many privileges in this country, but he might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle.  Besides, some day I may need a man to smother up an accident to myself.  Live and let live.  Die and let die.’