When the sun sunk down--the one intruder from other realms and persistent in suggestions of them--it was tranced luxury to sit in the perfumed air and forget that there was any world but these enchanted islands.
It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream--till you got a bite.
A scorpion bite.

Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in future.

Then came an adjournment to the bed-chamber and the pastime of writing up the day's journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the other--a whole community of them at a slap.

Then, observing an enemy approaching,--a hairy tarantula on stilts--why not set the spittoon on him?
It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous idea of the magnitude of his reach.

Then to bed and become a promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough to burn a hole through a raw-hide.