It was very, very hot. That is to say, it was as hot as it knows how to be in Johnstown, Guiana, which means a damp, sticky, stifling kind of heat. The sun made the muddy river look oily, and the party of three seated under the great fig-tree which shaded the boarding-house by the wharf seemed as if they were slowly melting away like so much of the sugar of which the wharves and warehouses and the vessels moored in the river smelt. Let us be quite correct: it was more the smell of treacle, and the casks and sugar bags piled up under an open-sided shed all looked gummy and sticky; while the flies-there, it was just as if all the flies in the world, little and big, had been attracted to hum, buzz, and in some cases utter useless cries for help when they had managed to get their wings daubed with the sweet juice and strove vainly to rise in the air.