Bathed before breakfast; no luck with crab trap. Stables at 9:30. Bathed again at midday, and again at 4:30. It's been very hot today, and the flies are a plague. We brought a chameleon into the mess at lunch and had him on the table. He caught any amount of flies, shot out a very long tongue and very rarely missed, often getting two flies at a shot; but he was a great sportsman, and never tried for the flies near him, always preferring the long shots. The longest shot we saw him make was when the fly was - without exaggeration - a foot from his nose. It was very funny to watch his eyes, they were both rarely looking in the same direction; as a rule, one looking to his front and the other cocked back looking astern.
A perfectly gorgeous sunset tonight. Elliott left this evening for three days leave at Cairo. During mess tonight the major suddenly spotted a scorpion running across the floor of the tent, and as I was sitting with my back to it and nothing on my legs but a pair of canvas shoes I got out of the way pretty quickly, till he was safely squashed. They are horrible looking things, like a small black lobster, only the tail is more dangerous than their claws.
I slept without a mosquitoes net last night and got horribly bitten, so shall put it up tonight, although I generally tear it down in my sleep before the night's out.
I hear tonight that an Austrian engineer officer has been captured near Katia and that a Bosche aeroplane has been flying over there. I wonder if they are meditating an attack?
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