woods threw a shade dark almost as twilight; but the air was full of
breathless heat, and Kettle's white drill clothes hung upon him clammy
and damp. Behind him, in the stern of the canoe, Brass Pan scratched
himself plaintively.

Dark fell and the dug-out was made fast to a mangrove root. The Africans
covered their heads to ward off ghosts, and snored on the damp floor of
the canoe. Kettle took quinine and dozed in the Madeira chair. Mists
closed round them, white with damp, earthy-smelling with malaria. Then
gleams of morning stole over the trees and made the mists visible, and
Kettle woke with a seaman's promptitude. He roused Brass Pan, and Brass
Pan roused the canoe-men, and the voyage proceeded.

Through more silent waterways the clumsy dug-out made her passage, where
alligators basked on the mudbanks and sometimes swam up from below and
nuzzled the sides of the boat, and where velvety black butterflies
fluttered in dancing swarms across the shafts of sunlight; and at last
her nose was driven on to a bed of slime, and Kettle was invited to "lib
for beach."

Brass Pan stepped dutifully over the mud, and Captain Kettle mounted his
back and rode to dry ground without as much as splashing the pipeclay on
his dainty canvas shoes. A bush path opened out ahead of them, winding,
narrow, uneven, and the man with the yaws went ahead and gave a lead.

As a result of exposure to the night mists of the river, Captain Kettle
had an attack of fever on him which made him shake with cold and burn
with heat alternately. His head was splitting, and his skin felt as
though it had been made originally to suit a small boy, and had been
stretched to near bursting-point to serve its present wearer.