Though there was plenty of vegetation on the dune, there was nothing in the shape of a tree, and later we lay down back to back near the fire, for we had no blankets, and the night was chilly as the day had been hot. I woke with a soft rain coming down in dense darkness, and was already soaked through, thanks to my idiocy in again bringing no waterproof. The fire was out and the wood hopelessly wet, and after wasting half my matches in vain, I woke van Reenen up so as to have someone to swear at. He said, “That’s right--blame me! Why, you Jonah, don’t you know that it’s you that brings all these samples of weather we get! Wet through in the middle of the Kalahari! Why, you’re the sort of man who’d get sunstroke at the North Pole!” We walked round a bit in the drenching drizzle, but got tired of kicking through the _haak doorn_ bushes and pulling out the thorns, and came back to where the fire had been, kicked the ashes away, and lay back to back again on the still warm sand. We had seen numbers of big leopard spoors on this dune, and when, a little later, van Reenen nudged me violently in the ribs and gave a “Hist!” I listened for all I was worth. Then I heard him cock his rifle. All I could hear was a faint scratching, but whether it was a big scratch some distance away, or a small scratching close at hand, neither of us could determine. And so we lay in the drizzle and darkness, with the locks of our rifles huddled under us as much as possible, waiting and expecting anything. Then suddenly van Reenen said, “Machtig! why, the damned thing is in my pocket!” He had on a thin khaki jacket which had been hung on a bush whilst he collected firewood early in the evening, and there certainly was something scratching in the pocket. Luckily he did not put his hand in, but pulled the coat off. I struck a match and he shook the pocket carefully, and out dropped a big black scorpion, the very counterpart of the one that had stung him so badly at the beginning of the trip. Had he put his hand in that pocket...! He killed it, and walked about most of the rest of the night, though he came over and woke me up once and said, “Jonah!” and I believe that to this day he blames me for that scorpion and the puff-adder. In the morning, however, we found that there had been another visitor during the night, the wet sand showing the spoor of an exceptionally big leopard, that had evidently been circling round our bivouac most of the night, his pad covering van Reenen’s footprint in several places.