It was dusk when I set out for the missionary's tent, and starlit night before I reached it--so fleeting is the summer twilight in that land. Rashid went with me, as in duty bound, and insisted on remaining with the servants of the missionary by the cook's fire, although I told him to go back repeatedly, knowing how his mouth must water for the headman's feast. The dudgeon which he felt at my desertion made him determined not to let me out of sight, and called for the martyrdom of someone, even let that someone be himself. The missionary called: 'Come in!' while I was still a good way off the tent. Entering, I found him stretched on a deck-chair, with hands behind his head. He did not rise upon my entrance, but just smiled and pointed to another chair beyond a little folding table laid for supper. He spoke of the day's heat and the fatigues of travel and the flies; and asked me how I could endure to sleep in native hovels full of fleas and worse. I told him that, by Suleyman's arrangement, we were to sleep upon the roof for safety. He sniffed. I then related a discussion I had overheard between Rashid and Suleyman as to the best way of defeating those domestic pests, thinking to make him laugh. Rashid had spoken of the virtues of a certain shrub; but Suleyman declared the best specific was a new-born baby. This, if laid within a room for a short while, attracted every insect. The babe should then be carried out and dusted. The missionary did not even smile. 'The brutes!' he murmured. 'How can you, an Englishman, and apparently a man of education, bear their intimacy?' They had their good points, I asserted--though, I fear, but lamely; for the robustness of his attitude impressed me, he being a man, presumably, of wide experience, and, what is more, a clergyman--the kind of man I had been taught to treat with some respect. He said no more till we had finished supper, which consisted of sardines and corned beef and sliced pineapple, tomatoes and half-liquid butter out of tins, and some very stale European bread which he had brought with him. Confronted with such mummy food, I thought with longing of the good, fresh meal which I had left behind me at the headman's house. He may have guessed my thoughts, for he observed: 'I never touch their food. It is insanitary'--which I knew to be exactly what they said of his. The man who waited on us seemed to move in fear, and was addressed by his employer very curtly. After the supper there was tea, which, I confess, was welcome, and then the missionary put me through a kind of catechism. Finding out who I was, and that we had some friends in common, he frowned deeply. He had heard of my existence in the land, it seemed. 'What are you doing here at all?' he asked severely. 'At your age you should be at college or in training for some useful work.' 'I'm learning things,' I told him rather feebly.