On this march we found that if we drank enormous quantities of water--in fact, if we forced ourselves to drink more than we wanted--we could carry on like a camel for a long time without a drink when the need arose. It may here be said, though a digression, that the fact about camels going for many days without water only holds good if they are trained to it. A friend of ours--a colonel in a Gurkha regiment--had told us that in the attempt to reach Gordon at Khartoum the camels with the relieving force were marched for a few days along the Nile and were watered twice daily. They naturally became used to drinking only a little at a time, and when they were suddenly taken across the desert it needed but two or three days without water to kill most of them. We moved on from the spring in very much better spirits. At 2.30 A.M. we rested for an hour till daylight, for we were now at the summit of the range, and might only involve ourselves in unnecessary difficulties if we went on without being able to see the country. Sleep, however, was impossible. It was exasperating, indeed, to find that by night it was too cold to sleep, and too hot by day. It seemed there was some truth in the saying-- "As a rule a man's a fool: When it's hot he wants it cool; When it's cool he wants it hot,-- Always wanting what is not." At daylight we marched on for another two and a half hours. The whole mountain range was covered with the oak-scrub, which practically hid us as we walked along the bed of a valley. At 6 A.M. we turned up a small ravine off the main valley we were in, and hid in pairs in the scrub. As we climbed to our hiding-places we disturbed a pair of huge eagle-owls. With these birds we were acquainted at Yozgad. "Patters," one of the naturalists with whom Johnny went out that Sunday morning, had kept a tame one. Whilst out hunting he had found a nest in a precipice, and, with the aid of a rope and two assistants, had managed to reach it. The nest contained two baby owls, one of which he brought back to the camp with him. It was at that time only a week old, and merely the size of a fowl, but in a few weeks it became a fine upstanding bird, guaranteed to implant terror within the most resolute breast. At the age of three weeks it would swallow with consummate skill any dead sparrow that might be thrown to it: nothing remained to tell the tale except a few straggling feathers attached to his majesty's beak and a satisfied leer in his eyes. Mice, of course, were as easy for him to gulp down as sugar-coated pills would be to a sword-swallower. One day the youngster and a full-grown gander were placed face to face a few feet apart. Panic-stricken, they eyed each other for a few breathless seconds, then both turned tail and fled.