To avoid some of these, we proceeded, wherever possible, to follow the crest-line, and as soon as the moon was up the field-glasses once more proved their value by enabling Cochrane to pick out the best route. As time went on, however, the country became more and more broken, until we found it necessary, if endless detours were to be avoided, to take the nullahs as they came. After a few more climbs, we almost gave up trying to keep on our proposed course, which was a little E. of S., and nearly decided instead to follow down a valley to the S.W., which promised better going. In the end, however, we contented ourselves with making a mile and a half an hour in our original direction, and were rewarded by finding in one of the nullahs a little spring of water. At 11 P.M., having found a fairly sheltered nook (for the wind at night was always cold at this altitude), we took the opportunity of snatching a little sleep. It has to be confessed that some of us also made a premature attack on the next day's ration of cheese and chupatties. To help level up our loads, these had been shared out already, and after our experience of the joys of a full meal--we allude again to the goat--we found having food in our packs a sore temptation. Without the safeguard of common ownership, it ceased to be inviolable. Yet perhaps after all it was best to eat at night, when we were doing all the hard work, and when, in addition, it was cold. Shortly after midnight we moved on, and were soon cheered by the discovery of a narrow track leading in the right direction, and cleverly avoiding all the difficulties of the broken ground on either side. This we were able to follow at a hard 3½ miles an hour until a little before daybreak. Then seeing lights ahead, we left the main track, thinking it must be leading us on to a village. Immediately around us there was no cover from view, and as the first tinge of dawn lit up the countryside, we saw that our only hiding-place would be in the wooded hills on the farther side of the valley in which lay the supposed houses. Proceeding at our best speed, we began a race with the sun, punctuated only by halts of a few seconds now and then as Cochrane searched anxiously round through the field-glasses; for we could hear herds moving about, and other lights had come into view. The descent proved steeper and longer than had been anticipated, and it was not till after five o'clock, and just before sunrise, that we reached the foot of the valley. Here we found we had to cross a stream ten to twelve feet wide, and, on account of the marshy ground, at a point not 500 yards away from the lights. These came, as we now saw, from a small group of timber huts, and in our haste to reach cover we plunged straight through the stream, to find that only a few yards farther up we might have crossed by stepping-stones in a place where the stream was only a foot deep.