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FTER all excitement of the gin-house fire had quieted down, neither Lyttleton nor McDonald could remember anything unusual in Zack's movements during the early hours of the night. They agreed in recalling that after dinner Zack had put on his blue slouch hat, and sat upon the top step, while they were talking with Colonel Spottiswoode on the porch. Some evenings he sat there nodding until the white men went to bed; sometimes he got up and drifted aimlessly away. The British officers tried in vain to recollect what Zack had done on that particular night.

Thirty years of Sudan campaigning had made Lyttleton a light sleeper. It was he who, in the dead still hours, first heard the alarming cry of "Nar! Nar!"—Fire—from an Arab watchman on the barge. Lyttleton had raised on his cot, then broke through the mosquito bar, just as McDonald bounded out of bed. At that moment both of them heard Zack's voice in the next room, 325