them only with sixteen hours' work. The infantry of the line have their
periodical rests, a month it may be, of comparative leisure before the
enemy trenches. But for mechanical transport there is no peace, save
such as comes when back axles break, and the big land ship is dragged
into the bush to be repaired. Hot and sweating men striving to renew
some part or improvise, by bullock hide "reims," a temporary road repair
that will bring them limping back to the advance base. Here the company
workshop waits to repair these derelicts of the road. Burning with
malaria, when the hot sun draws the lurking fever from their bones,
tortured with dysentery, they've got to do their job until they reach
their lorry park again. But often the repair gang cannot reach a
stranded lorry, and the drivers, helpless before a big mechanical
repair, have to camp out alongside their car, till help arrives and tows
them in. A tarpaulin rigged up along one side of the lorry, poles cut
from the thorn bush, and they have protection from the burning sun by
day. A thorn hedge, the native "boma," keeps out lions and the sneaking
hyaena at night. Nor are their rifles more than a half protection, for
the '303 makes so clean a hole that it is often madness to attempt to
shoot a lion with it. Once wounded he is far more dangerous a foe. Here
the "tota" earns his pay, for he can hunt the native villages for
"cuckoos," the native fowls, and eggs.

The load of rations must not, save at the last extremity, be broached.

And the roads they travel on: you never saw such things, mere bush
tracks where the pioneers have cut down trees and bushes, and left the
stumps above the level earth. No easy job to steer these great lumbering
machines between these treacherous stumps. From early dawn to late night
you'll meet these leviathans of the road, diving into the bush to force
a new road for themselves when the old track is too deep in mud or dust,