If the commander of a British army had come to me then and there and offered help, I could have done nothing, only asked him to wait like me.

The peril, whatever it was, did not threaten me only, though I and Wardlaw and Japp might be the first to suffer; but I had a terrible feeling that I alone could do something to ward it off, and just what that something was I could not tell.

I was horribly afraid, not only of unknown death, but of my impotence to play any manly part.
I was alone, knowing too much and yet too little, and there was no chance of help under the broad sky.

I cursed myself for not writing to Aitken at Lourenco Marques weeks before.

He had promised to come up, and he was the kind of man who kept his word.
In the late afternoon I dragged Wardlaw out for a walk.