He lay then and was quiet for a while and looked across the heat shimmer of the plain to the edge of the bush.

There were a few Tommies that showed minute and white against the yellow and, far off, he saw a herd of zebra, white against the green of the bush.

This was a pleasant camp under big trees against a hill, with good water, and close by, a nearly dry water hole where sand grouse flighted in the mornings.

"Wouldn't you like me to read?" she asked. She was sitting on a canvas chair beside his cot. "There's a breeze coming up." "No thanks." "Maybe the truck will come." "I don't give a damn about the truck." "I do." "You give a damn about so many things that I don't." "Not so many, Harry." "What about a drink?" "It's supposed to be bad for you. It said in Black's to avoid all alcohol. You shouldn't drink." "Molo!" he shouted.

"Yes Bwana." "Bring whiskey-soda." "Yes Bwana." "You shouldn't," she said. "That's what I mean by giving up. It says it's bad for you. I know it's bad for you." "No," he said. "It's good for me." So now it was all over, he thought. So now he would never have a chance to finish it. So this was the way it ended in a bickering over a drink.

Since the gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain and with the pain the horror had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and anger that this was the end of it.

For this, that now was coming, he had very little curiosity. For years it had obsessed him; but now it meant nothing in itself.

It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either.

Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.