DURRANCE SHARPENS HIS WITS It was a night of May, and outside the mess-room at Wadi Halfa three officers were smoking on a grass knoll above the Nile.

The moon was at its full, and the strong light had robbed even the planets of their lustre.

The smaller stars were not visible at all, and the sky washed of its dark colour, curved overhead, pearly-hued and luminous.

The three officers sat in their lounge chairs and smoked silently, while the bull-frogs croaked from an island in mid-river.

At the bottom of the small steep cliff on which they sat the Nile, so sluggish was its flow, shone like a burnished mirror, and from the opposite bank the desert stretched away to infinite distances, a vast plain with scattered hummocks, a plain white as a hoar frost on the surface of which the stones sparkled like jewels.