natives he felt there was little fear.

He built up the fire; and determined if it were possible to keep awake the
whole night beside it.

He was a slight man of middle height, with a sloping forehead and pale blue
eyes: but the jaws were hard set, and the thin lips of the large mouth
were those of a man who could strongly desire the material good of life,
and enjoy it when it came his way. Over the lower half of the face were
scattered a few soft white hairs, the growth of early manhood.

From time to time he listened intently for possible sounds from the
distance where his friends might be encamped, and might fire off their guns
at seeing his light; or he listened yet more intently for sounds nearer at
hand: but all was still, except for the occasional cracking of the wood in
his own fire, and the slight whistle of the breeze as it crept past the
stones on the kopje. He doubled up his great hat and put it in the pocket
of his overcoat, and put on a little two-pointed cap his mother had made
for him, which fitted so close that only one lock of white hair hung out
over his forehead. He turned up the collar of his coat to shield his neck
and ears, and threw it open in front that the blaze of the fire might warm
him. He had known many nights colder than this when he had sat around the
camp fire with his comrades, talking of the niggers they had shot or the
kraals they had destroyed, or grumbling over their rations; but tonight the
chill seemed to creep into his very bones.

The darkness of the night above him, and the silence of the veld about him,
oppressed him. At times he even wished he might hear the cry of a jackal
or of some larger beast of prey in the distance; and he wished that the
wind would blow a little louder, instead of making that little wheezing