Sanders

All this happened in the interim between excellencies, or it could hardly
have happened at all.

His Excellency, the retiring Administrator of the Reserved Territories,
had departed amidst the banging of guns and the playing of the national
anthem by a small band of near-white musicians, all of whom, and
especially the cornet, had a tendency to play flat. The new Excellency
was enduring the agony of gout at his house in Budleigh Salterton in
Devon, and his departure from home was indefinitely postponed.

A change of administration made little or no difference to the people of
the big river, and Captain Hamilton of the King's Houssas, for one, was
hardly conscious of the lacuna as he strode savagely towards the hut
which housed his youthful second in command.

His annoyance was well warranted, for Lieutenant Tibbets had committed
the unpardonable crime of writing to the newspapers--a weakness of his.
Hamilton was moist and furious, for the afternoon sun blistered the
world, and as he crossed the yellow oven-floor called a parade-ground,
the heat of it came through the soles of his boots and tortured him.

The barrack hutments which formed one side of the square danced and
shimmered in the heat haze; he saw the fronds of the Isisi palms in a
blur; even the weaver birds were silent; when it grows too hot for the
weavers to talk, it is very hot indeed.