Half stunned, he picked himself up from the ground, and the pain in his back was sufficient to assure him that he had not merely fallen asleep and imagined the whole business. With his loaded rifle at the ready he searched the edge of the mimosa bush as closely as he was able, but could discover nothing; he had an idea of communicating with the sentry next in the line to himself, but, since there was no further disturbance, and nothing to show, he decided to say nothing, but simply to stick to his post until the next relief came round. Suddenly the uncanny sense of terror returned to him, intensified. He felt certain this time that the evil thing which had struck him before would strike again, and he felt certain that he was being watched by unseen eyes. He was new to the country; as an irregular he was new to military ways, and he promised himself that if ever he got safely home he would not volunteer for active service again. The sense of something unseen and watching him grew, and with it grew also the nightmarish terror, until he was actually afraid to move. Then, by means of the same mysterious agency, he was struck again to the ground, and this time he lay only partially conscious and quite helpless until the reliefs came round. The sergeant in charge of the reliefs had an idea at first of making the man a close prisoner for lying down and sleeping at his post, but after a little investigation he changed his mind and sent one of his men for the doctor instead. The doctor announced, after examination, that if the blow which felled the man had struck him a few inches higher up in the back he would not have been alive to remember it, and the man himself was taken into hospital for a few days to recover from the injuries so mysteriously inflicted. In the morning the column moved off on its way, and no satisfactory reason could be adduced for the midnight occurrence. But residents in that district will tell you, unto this day, that one who has the patience to keep quiet and watch in the moonlight can see baboons come up from the mimosa scrub and amuse themselves by throwing clods of earth and rocks at each other. It is a good camp story, and I tell it as it was told to me, without vouching for its truth. Any man who cares to go into a military camp--by permission of the officer commanding, of course--and has the tact and patience to win the confidence of the soldiers in the camp, can hear stories equally good, and plenty of them. For, as previously remarked, camp life breeds yarns. CHAPTER VIII MUSKETRY