‘Well, we went back to Kinjan, who was awake, for a wonder, and told him; and then he said he’d just remembered the whole country round those parts was in the hands of the rebels, and that if we were seen we should be killed, so he recommended us to go on hunting along shore, till we ran across a boat, and get away in that, and he recommended us particularly to look out for a barr’l of whisky; then he went to sleep again. Well, we just sat down, and waited for him to get thirsty, calculating that when that was so, being an Irishman, he would find us a way out of the fix. And presently he got, and it woke him up, and after cursing a bit, he sat up quite spry--but a piece yallow still--and figured out the most beautiful plan of how we would go and take that city if necessary, and make them provide us with an escort down to Mogador. Then he said it was no good doing anything till it was cool and dark. So he lay down again and went to sleep; and after one more look along shore we lay down alongside and did the same, meaning to start with the dawn next morning for the city. I reckon we were played out that evening, and felt real rocky and dispurited.’ Dick Denver’s memories of that thirsty day were here too much for him; he rose and called again for drinks across the platform. When they had come, in the hands of a sleepy and coloured individual, he finished a whisky and soda at a single draught, and resumed. ‘That fellow was infectious, I guess; anyway I slept until a heavy sort of feeling about my chest woke me, and I found a great hairy nigger cuss had taken me for an arm-chair. All around us in the moonlight were a lot of ferocious-looking devils in long robes and turbans, armed to the teeth. Torin was lying spread-eagled on my right--he didn’t ’pear to be discommoded--but he spat out a broken tooth, and I heard him mutter to himself, “You fools, much better have killed me, and have done with it;” and I judged he was powerfully divided between two sorts of wish. ‘There was a nigger holding on to each of my arms and legs, so I took it quietly, and they bound me up like an eternal mummy. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kinjan’s face shining round and red in the middle of a mass of niggers. He rolled his eye at me, and began, “Be aisy, Dick--Begad! I’ll take tay with ye prisintly, ye hairy haythens!” Just then one of the niggers stuffed his mouth with sand, so he shut his head kind of sudden. Then they picketed their horses round us, and sat on their haunches, and pow-wowed everlastingly.