‘The last appeal of civilisation,’ said he, ‘and a thing I hate to use. Hold out your arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn’t ruined your muscle; and what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a buffalo subcutaneously. Now in a few minutes the morphia will begin working. Lie down and wait.’ A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began to creep over Hummil’s face. ‘I think,’ he whispered,--‘I think I’m going off now. Gad! it’s positively heavenly! Spurstow, you must give me that case to keep; you--’ The voice ceased as the head fell back. ‘Not for a good deal,’ said Spurstow to the unconscious form. ‘And now, my friend, sleeplessness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral fibre in little matters of life and death, I’ll just take the liberty of spiking your guns.’ He paddled into Hummil’s saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the heel of a riding-boot. ‘That’s settled,’ he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. ‘These little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too much sympathy with gun-room accidents.’ And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried in the doorway, ‘You fool!’ Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to their friends a little before they die. Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil stood in the doorway, rocking with helpless laughter. ‘That was awf’ly good of you, I’m sure,’ he said, very slowly, feeling for his words. ‘I don’t intend to go out by my own hand at present. I say, Spurstow, that stuff won’t work. What shall I do? What shall I do?’ And panic terror stood in his eyes. ‘Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at once.’ ‘I daren’t. It will only take me half-way again, and I shan’t be able to get away this time. Do you know it was all I could do to come out just now? Generally I am as quick as lightning; but you had clogged my feet. I was nearly caught.’ ‘Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down.’ ‘No, it isn’t delirium; but it was an awfully mean trick to play on me. Do you know I might have died?’ As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had wiped out of Hummil’s face all that stamped it for the face of a man, and he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He had slept back into terrified childhood. ‘Is he going to die on the spot?’ thought Spurstow. Then, aloud, ‘All right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You couldn’t sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense?’