Barnavaux

nd you'll break your bedstead, I tell you. When a fellow is six foot of misery like yourself and two hundred pounds in weight he doesn't do gymnastics on camp-bedsteads. Damaging the regimental furniture, destroying camp property in the enemy's presence: death and degradation. Keep still, you idiot! " The camp-bed, which had been hastily put together, and consisted of thin planks taken from a packing case, and a framework of Unpolished ebony cut from the neighbouring woods, creaked under the weight of Miiller, who, without replying, kicked out with his bare foot at the wall of the hut. And as this wall was nothing more nor less than a thin lattice-work of banana leaves, woven on slender poles, asis the custom in the Betsimisarake district, his foot went right through, and ajnumber of little splinters ran into it and held it like so many claws. The soldier began to swear lustily. The hut door was open, and the moon outside shining with intolerable brilliance. The soil was rendering up all the heat it had absorbed during the day. It was sweating heat, a damp heat that reeked of crushed grass, fever, and mud. Around a circular space, broken here and there by low dark huts which looked like blots in the moon's dazzling rays, three sacrificial stakes bore a curiously barbaric burden, which consisted of the horns and bleached skulls of 9xen. These heads made one ponder the fancy that long ago, when sacrifices had been offered on this spot, the heads alone had r...