And so it proved as they rode on properly refreshed, meeting with no adventure, but being startled by the barking roars of lions twice during the night, which came to an end as they reached a very similar kopje offering just such accommodation as they had met with on the previous morning.
“Hah!” said Ingleborough. “Just enough prog left for a rough breakfast. To-morrow we shall have to begin travelling by day, so as to pay a visit to some farm, for we can’t do as the nags do, eat grass when they can get it and nibble green shoots when they can’t. Now then, my dear Noll, the orders for to-day are: sleep beneath this projecting shelf.”
“But I say,” said West, a minute or so later, “is your rifle charged? You were wiping the barrels as we rode along.”
There was no reply, for Ingleborough was fast asleep, and West soon followed his example.
Chapter Thirteen.
After a Lapse.
Oliver West was sleeping soundly that night from sheer fatigue; but all the same his slumber was not pleasant, for though his body was resting his brain was hard at work.
Before an hour had passed he was conscious of being cold, and in a dreamy way he felt that he ought to do what under the circumstances was impossible: that is to say, put more clothes over him, or, failing them, as he had no more, roll himself over and over in the blanket that he had brought strapped to his saddle-bow and only thrown over him when he lay down to sleep. But his body was so steeped in sleep that he did not stir, and suffered from the freezing air of the night—so tremendous a change from the torrid heat of mid-day out on the veldt.