awful to see her; her hair seems to stand on end, and she curses and
swears away in her heathen talk--at least I fancy she must be cursing,
from the look of her."

"And what do you do then?"

"I make her a perlite bow, and I say, 'Young woman, your position is one
that I don't quite understand, and can't recognise. Let me tell you that
I has a duty to perform to my master as is incapacitated by illness,
and that I am going to perform it until I am incapacitated too,' but
she don't take no heed, not she--only curses and swears away worse than
ever. Last night she put her hand under that sort of night-shirt she
wears and whips out a knife with a kind of a curl in the blade, so I
whips out my revolver, and we walks round and round each other till at
last she bursts out laughing. It isn't nice treatment for a Christian
man to have to put up with from a savage, however handsome she may be,
but it is what people must expect as is _fools_ enough" (Job laid great
emphasis on the "fools") "to come to such a place to look for things no
man is meant to find. It's a judgment on us, sir--that's my view; and I,
for one, is of opinion that the judgment isn't half done yet, and when
it is done we shall be done too, and just stop in these beastly caves
with the ghosts and the corpseses for once and all. And now, sir, I
must be seeing about Mr. Leo's broth, if that wild cat will let me; and,
perhaps, you would like to get up, sir, because it's past nine o'clock."

Job's remarks were not of an exactly cheering order to a man who had
passed such a night as I had; and, what is more, they had the weight of
truth. Taking one thing with another, it appeared to me to be an utter
impossibility that we should escape from the place we were. Supposing
that Leo recovered, and supposing that _She_ would let us go, which was