“I’ve—I’ve been dreaming,” I faltered heavily, my heart beating all the time with big, regular thumps.
“Oh!—He’s dreaming too. You’re two brave boys to sleep like that the night before you’re both to be shot for spies.”
“Ah!” I sighed as he dropped back heavily from the back of the wagon, “and it was all a dream. Ugh!” I shuddered. I lay still again, my mind going over the fantasy of the night, which came back so vividly, yet was so strangely mixed and absurd; but all the time Denham slept on, breathing heavily, dead to all the sorrows and horror of our unlucky situation.
The night was cold—bitterly cold—and I was dreadfully wide awake, wishing now that I could sleep again, but wishing in vain. I lay and listened to the sound of talking outside, two of the Boers engaging in a conversation in which I heard the word “cold.” Then there came the sound of the drawing aside of the back curtains, and a big, soft bundle was pitched in, then another. Directly afterwards two of our guard climbed in, opened one of the bundles, and spread it out on the floor beyond us. It was a great skin karosse, or rug, such as the Kaffirs make up of the hides of the big game.
“It’s a cold night,” said the man who had spoken before; and, one at my head and the other at my feet, they lifted me between them on the big rug.
“Now, sleepy,” he said, “rouse up.”
But Denham was perfectly insensible in his deep sleep of exhaustion, and unconscious of what was going on as he was laid beside me. Then the second bundle was opened and thrown over us.
“There,” said the big Boer; “we don’t want you to be too cold to stand up like men in the morning. Can you go to sleep now?”
“Yes; thank you,” I said hoarsely, and I lay and listened as they got out of the wagon.
“Can I sleep?” I thought. “No. But if I could, and dream all that again! Poor old Bob!” I murmured to myself as a peculiar sensation of warmth began to creep through my numbed limbs, and once more I lay thinking about that strangely confused and realistic dream of which fragments began to flit before me, and for a time made me more wakeful, but not for long. Then the morning, the thoughts of my coming fate, the recollection of the night-alarm which seemed to have put an end to what must have been intended for a night-attack, even the sense of pain—all these died away, and I was soundly asleep once more; this time without a dream.