"In the jungle, sir, in the jungle, which swarms with the lovely creatures, and with pheasants too. Pff! 'tis hot--Boy, more ice." "Don't be so hard on a fellow, doctor," drawled the lieutenant. "I'm new to the country, and I've twice as much body to carry about as you have. You're seasoned and tough; I'm young and tender. So the jungle swarms with peacocks, does it?" "Yes, sir, swarms," said the doctor, with asperity. "Well," said Chumbley, languidly, "let it swarm! I knew it swarmed with mosquitoes." "Sir," said the doctor, contemptuously, as he glanced at the great frame of the young officer, "you never exert yourself, and I don't believe, sir, that you know what is going on within a mile of the Residency." "I really don't believe I do," said the young man, with a sleepy yawn. "I say, Mr Perowne, can't you give us a little more air?" "My dear Mr Chumbley," said the host, a thin, slightly grey, rather _distingue_ man, "every door and window is wide open. Take a little more iced cup." "It makes a fellow wish he were a frog," drawled the lieutenant. "I should like to go and lie right in the water with only my nose in the air." As he spoke he gazed sleepily through his half-closed eyes at the broad, moonlit river gliding on like so much molten silver, while on the farther bank the palms stood up in columns, spreading their great fronds like lace against the spangled purple sky. Below them, playing amidst the bushes and undergrowth that fringed the river, it seemed as if nature had sent the surplus of her starry millions from sky to earth, for the leaves were dotted with fire-flies scintillating and flashing in every direction. A dense patch of darkness would suddenly blaze out with hundreds of soft, lambent sparks, then darken again for another patch to be illumined, as the wondrous insects played about like magnified productions of the points of light that run through well-burned tinder. From time to time there would be a faint plash rise from the river, and the water rippled in the moonbeams, sounds then well understood by the occupants of Mr Perowne's dining-room, for as the languid lieutenant made another allusion to the pleasure of being a frog, the doctor said, laughing: "Try it Chumbley; you are young and tolerably plump, and it would make a vacancy for another sub. The crocodiles would bless you." "Two natives were carried off last week while bathing on the bank," said a sharp, harsh voice, and a little, thin, dry man who had been lying back in an easy-chair with a handkerchief over his head raised himself and passed his glass to be filled with claret and iced water. "Hah! Harley," he continued, with a broad Scotch accent, "you ought to put down crocodiles. What's the use of our having a Resident if he is not to suppress every nuisance in the place?" "Put down crocodiles, Mr Stuart, eh? Rather a task!"