Tired men cannot go on talking all night, even about the events of an exciting day, and one by one our friends rolled themselves up in their coats and went off to sleep. And how the unfortunates on sentry-go envied them! That was an infliction which Tantalus escaped, but it might well compare with those which have caused his name to be embodied in our language. To feel that the lives of a number of other people as well as your own depend on your keeping extremely wide awake, when you are dead beat and have to fight against the strongest possible inclination to doze even as you walk about, is really no light trial of fortitude, though it is not reckoned amongst the hardships of campaigning. But if you are within sight of your sleeping comrades, and within hearing of their snores, it becomes doubly exasperating, and might really sour the temper if it were not for the consolatory reflection that another time _you_ will be the happy sleeper, and one of the present performers on the nose will be listening to your efforts to play upon that organ. It has been whispered that evil men when on sentry have been known to feel a grim delight in an alarm which has dissipated the slumber of their comfortable comrades, but we may surely hope that this is slanderous. However that may be, the slumbers of those who were not kept awake by the pain of wounds or by duty the night after El Teb were not disturbed, and next day the main body, after a guard had been left at the wells, went on to Tokar. "Do you think they will fight?" asked Green of one of his seniors during a short halt. "Sure to," replied the other. "You saw for yourself what determined demons they are, and it is not likely that they will give up a place they have only just taken without striking a blow for it." "Do you think they will fight?" asked Tom Strachan of another, not in the hearing of the first oracle, who had moved away. "Not they!" responded the second. "After such a licking as they got yesterday all the fight will be taken out of them." "Which shall we believe, Green?" said Tom presently. "It is very puzzling," replied the inquiring mind. "Suppose we wait and see before we make up our minds." "A Daniel come to judgment!" exclaimed Strachan. "A second Daniel! We _will_ wait." "Hulloa! There's Charley Halton!" as a smart young cavalry officer cantered past with a message, having delivered which he came to exchange greetings with his friends.