96 THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES rather the exception than the rule, and men walked about in the tropical sun with a helmet on their heads while their back was protected only by a flannel shirt. Sunstroke acts in different ways. I have seen the quartermaster of a P. and O. in the Red Sea suddenly drop as if he had been shot; but, in most cases, the initial stages—loss of appetite, nausea, and headache—give one full warning, and if the patient can at once get under some shade and secure medical assistance, the “touch of the sun,” which has upset him for the time being, passes away without leaving any effects behind it except a general lassitude for some time.

About four o'clock the hottest part was over, but the danger of sunstroke was, if anything, greater, because the oblique rays of the sun fell upon one’s neck, unless, indeed, as was the case with the rank and file, a “curtain” was attached to the helmet. Nearly everybody drank tea about this time. There is a kind of notion abroad that this beverage serves to cool one, but the general effect produced in the Sudan seemed quite the reverse. Any perspiration left in one’s seba-