Niger

Selkirk. It was fever again ; fortunately, this was
a mild attack. He lay in his hut and listened to the
torrential drumming of water on the roof.
The rains had come and through the windows and
door he could see the blinding fall and pelt for
tedious hour on hour. Sometimes it would slacken
off, dry, and the heat would grow stifling till the
day waned into night and the chorusing voices of
Africa kept Mungo from much-needed sleep—the
laughter of hyenas and the whining of jackals ; and,
booming loud and staccato above all else, the calling
of the bull-frogs. Then the thunder would growl
again above the dripping bush and muddy-watered
Gambia, and the rains resume in the stifling dark of
the nights.
Gambia flowed slow and brown with detritus, and
the plants and weeds around Pisania flourished in a
rank luxuriance. Mungo has little to tell of the
hours of boredom and weariness that were surely
his, even though Laidley had by now returned and
had taken to nursing the invalid and beguiling some
of the wearier hours with tales and information.
September swam past in a mist of hot rains, and
still Mungo remained in bed, wasted considerably,
and weakened. But his constitution was also being
thoroughly inoculated against the mischances of the
future. Gambia waters rose and rose. At last, a
month or so after Mungo had taken to his bed the
second time, they reached high-water mark—fifteen
feet above the high-water mark of the tide. There¬
after they commenced to sink. Mungo heard
47