minute. The fire flashes up; all the row of heads is lifted up
simultaneously to watch it; showers of sparks sail aloft into the
blue night; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy spectacle. How the
sparks mount and twinkle and disappear like tropical fireflies, and
all the leaves murmur, and clap their hands! Some of the sparks do
not go out: we see them flaming in the sky when the flame of the fire
has died down. Well, good-night, goodnight. More folding of the
arms to sleep; more grumbling about the hardness of a hand-bag,
or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for a pillow.
Good-night. Was that a remark?--something about a root, a stub in
the ground sticking into the back. "You couldn't lie along a hair?"
---"Well, no: here's another stub. It needs but a moment for the
conversation to become general,--about roots under the shoulder,
stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper
to balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground,
the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply.
The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl is
also awake; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noise
than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper.
Everybody is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep in
good earnest. A last good-night. There is an appalling silence. It
is interrupted in the most natural way in the world. Somebody has
got the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seems
to have been brought up on the seashore, and to know how to make all
the deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is also like a
war-horse; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly he
snorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in another
key! One head is raised after another.

"Who is that?"