should not be true. He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for plans
and distances and things of that kind, and he certainly would not
take the trouble to invent imaginary traps. He could earn more by
doing his legitimate work. He never varies the tale in the telling,
and grows very hot and indignant when he thinks of the
disrespectful treatment he received. He wrote this quite
straightforwardly at first, but he has since touched it up in places
and introduced Moral Reflections, thus:

In the beginning it all arose from a slight attack of fever. My work
necessitated my being in camp for some months between
Pakpattan and Muharakpur--a desolate sandy stretch of country as
every one who has had the misfortune to go there may know. My
coolies were neither more nor less exasperating than other gangs,
and my work demanded sufficient attention to keep me from
moping, had I been inclined to so unmanly a weakness.

On the 23d December, 1884, I felt a little feverish. There was a
full moon at the time, and, in consequence, every dog near my tent
was baying it. The brutes assembled in twos and threes and drove
me frantic. A few days previously I had shot one loud-mouthed
singer and suspended his carcass _in terrorem_ about fifty yards from
my tent-door. But his friends fell upon, fought for, and ultimately
devoured the body; and, as it seemed to me, sang their hymns of
thanksgiving afterward with renewed energy.

The light-heartedness which accompanies fever acts differently on
different men. My irritation gave way, after a short time, to a
fixed determination to slaughter one huge black and white beast
who had been foremost in song and first in flight throughout the