If a mistake had been made it was his mistake, and if the boys suffered from it the blame would be his.
So he beat out into mid-stream, where the sail of the low-lying craft would be but a speck when viewed from the shore, and with a beam wind laid her on a course which she kept almost dead straight, with a tack at long intervals only.

In the shade of the awning the boys slept the dreamless sleep of the healthy, and he let them sleep on till the sun stood almost above the mast, sending down a blaze that scorched.

Then he beached the Okapi on the shelving shore of a sand-spit, without vegetation of any kind to give shelter to mosquitoes, and awoke them.
"All hands to bathe!" he shouted; and the three of them were soon in, and no sooner in than out; for, according to the hunter, the virtue of a bathe was not in long immersion, but in friction.

"With their heads well protected, but their bodies bare to the sun, the friction was obtained by rubbing handfuls of the dry, clean sand over limbs and body till the skin glowed.
"Now I will snatch a few winks while you work the levers, until the wind springs up again." Mr.Hume stretched himself forward under the awning after unstopping the mast; and the two friends, after tossing a bucket of water over the canvas awning, took their seats, clad in pyjamas and body-belts only, and bent gaily to the levers which "click-clanked" merrily.
Their feet were naked, for Mr.Hume had taught the lesson that the feet should be cool and the head protected; their arms were bare to the elbow, of a fine mahogany hue; their movements were brisk; but the best evidence of health was in the clearness of their eyes.
Fever shows its touch in the "gooseberry" eye, dull and clouded; in the moist pallor of the skin, and in a general listlessness.

Even if they are free from fever, white men in Central Africa often grow listless because of insufficient nutriment.