I had conquered, and, moreover, without experiencing the loss of dignity that a fall in the stream would have occasioned. Exhilarated by my success, I reeled into the tent and sank on the carpet. “Sank,” perhaps, hardly gives the correct impression, for as soon as the legs were bent at the knee I sat down with disagreeable suddenness. I then proceeded to drink large quantities of liquid--tea, water, and sherbet--and when my charpoy was brought into the tent I climbed on to it and lay down, hoping to lose my senses in forgetfulness. It was without avail, and I rolled from side to side seeking rest and finding none. In the course of three hours the unwilling fowl was caught, killed, and cooked, and I made a tough, moist meal. But now I could rest, and no longer in vain did I court the Goddess of sleep. [Sidenote: Unwelcome Guests.] Further on in our march we found the locusts had been at work. Around Jelalabad the country in spite of the heat had the appearance of winter: the trees were bare. In the Palace gardens the oranges hung nearly ripe, but every leaf had gone. When we arrived there we had afternoon tea in the Guest-house at the Palace, and afterwards rode on some few miles beyond Jelalabad, where we camped. I had dinner in the open and then went into my tent to lie down: but I came out again--quickly. The locusts had invaded it and had crawled up inside the tent and over the charpoy, so that all was green--a beautiful green shot with pink: but it gave me no pleasure, the colour seemed out of place. Moreover, I could not lie down without crunching my unwelcome guests; and no host, I take it, cares to lie upon the mangled remains of guests, be they never so unwelcome. We had noticed that day as we travelled along that a careful peasant had dug a shallow pond at the foot of a beautiful mulberry tree. The locusts had perforce spared that tree: they might have tumbled off and they cannot swim; but they had spitefully nipped off every leaf that spread beyond the water. A shallow pond, therefore, was dug some little distance away in the hard-baked earth for my charpoy to stand in, and since we could not get the locusts out of the tent, we determined to take the tent away from the locusts. On further consideration, however, it seemed likely, and indeed the Armenian insisted very strongly on the point, that if I lay all night with my bed in a pond I should wake up in the morning with fever or rheumatism, or something disagreeable which would be likely to hinder our journey.