"Yes. Is it you?" responded the other. "This isn't your room, old chap; it's mine. Yours is next door. For Heaven's sake, get out. The others have thrown in their stuff. They're off. We shall be overpowered, I tell you." "Well, I can't find my room," said Mr. H----, desperately. "Here, throw the stuff down anywhere. I'm off; come on." As it turned out later, Six-and-eightpence's prussic acid did go into the tins, or at any rate most of it. But Mr. H---- lost his head, thinking he could smell through his blanket the deadly fumes already pouring from the other rooms, and, hearing everyone else making a dash for the open air, he upset his with a crash. He rushed for what he thought was the door, but it was the window, all pasted up. His blanketed head went crash at the glass, luckily not breaking it, and then, realizing that he had made a mistake, he groped round for the door. But--it was shut and locked! Muffled in his blanket, Six-and-eightpence, thinking Mr. H---- had gone out before him, had run out, slamming and locking the door behind him! His prussic acid was already mingling with the vitriol. Mr. H---- could smell it! When we all got outside we threw off our masks and blankets, and someone said, "Where is H----?" "He's not here!" "Then he must be in the house!" "Good heavens! Not here?" said Six-and-eightpence, looking round him in a dazed way and rubbing his eyes. "Why, yes; I must have done--yes! I've locked him into my room! This comes of our being muffled in these blankets!" "Good heavens, man!" yelled the Electrical Engineer, "he'll be dead by now!" We all made a run for the house, clean forgetting our blankets, and burst open the hall door again. It was strange; but there were not half the fumes we expected. What did it mean?... However, we did not stop to inquire.... Six-and-eightpence dragged open his bedroom door, and there, prone on the floor, lay Mr. H----, rolled in his blanket and kicking faintly. "Who's there?" he demanded. "I'm almost done for, you fellows!" "Wonder you're not done for entirely," said they, hauling him out by his blanket and the hair of his head combined. "Didn't we say old Six-and-eightpence would do just this? Out you come!" And in a few seconds the rescued one lay on the veldt, and kneeling beside him we all cried, "Saved!" and tried very hard to shed tears of joy.... * * * * * The day passed somehow, all sitting on the veldt, and Mr. H---- (in the only arm-chair, propped up affectionately with pillows) described to us in moving terms what it had felt like to be face to face with death. "Did you see the whole of your past life laid before you in a flash--like they say drowning people always do?" we asked. "Yes," said Mr. H----, in tones of gloomy triumph; "I did, and I can tell you it wasn't pleasant." Privately, I wasn't surprised to hear it, though I didn't say so. "What was it like--the going off under the fumes?" asked someone else.