eaten too much, I get it."

"I always have it since I came up here," said the Englishman. "It is that
a vast world is resting on me--a whole globe: and I am a midge beneath it.
I try to raise it, and I cannot. So I lie still under it--and let it crush
me!"

"It's curious you should have the nightmare so up here," said the Colonial;
"one gets so little to eat."

There was a silence: he was picking the little fine feathers from the
bird, and the Englishman was watching the ants.

"Mind you," the Colonial said at last, "I don't say that in this case the
Captain was to blame; Halket made an awful ass of himself. He's never been
quite right since that time he got lost and spent the night out on the
kopje. When we found him in the morning he was in a kind of dead sleep; we
couldn't wake him; yet it wasn't cold enough for him to have been frozen.
He's never been the same man since; queer, you know; giving his rations
away to the coloured boys, and letting the other fellows have his dot of
brandy at night; and keeping himself sort of apart to himself, you know.
The other fellows think he's got a touch of fever on, caught wandering
about in the long grass that day. But I don't think it's that; I think
it's being alone in the veld that's got hold of him. Man, have you ever
been out like that, alone in the veld, night and day, and not a soul to
speak to? I have; and I tell you, if I'd been left there three days longer
I'd have gone mad or turned religious. Man, it's the nights, with the
stars up above you, and the dead still all around. And you think, and
think, and think! You remember all kinds of things you've never thought of
for years and years. I used to talk to myself at last, and make believe it