They lounged about cantonments - it was too hot for any sort of
game, and almost too hot for vice - and fuddled themselves in the
evening, and filled themselves to distension with the healthy
nitrogenous food provided for them, and the more they stoked the
less exercise they took and more explosive they grew. Then tempers
began to wear away, and men fell a-brooding over insults real or
imaginary, for they had nothing else to think of. The tone of the
repartees changed, and instead of saying light-heartedly: I'll
knock your silly face in," men grew laboriously polite and hinted
that the cantonments were not big enough for themselves and their
enemy, and that there would be more space for one of the two in
another Place.

It may have been the Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of
the case is that Losson had for a long time been worrying Simmons
in an aimless way. It gave him occupation. The two had their cots
side by side, and would sometimes spend a long afternoon swearing
at each other; but Simmons was afraid of Losson and dared not
challenge him to a fight. He thought over the words in the hot
still nights, and half the hate he felt towards Losson he vented
on the wretched punkah-coolie.

Losson bought a parrot in the bazar, and put it into a little
cage, and lowered the cage into the cool darkness of a well, and
sat on the well-curb, shouting bad language down to the parrot. He
taught it to say: "Simmons, ye so-oor," which means swine, and
several other things entirely unfit for publication. He was a big
gross man, and he shook like a jelly when the parrot had the
sentence correctly. Simmons, however, shook with rage, for all the