He tried this side and that side, front after back, and returned to the back; but it was no good, for the fact was that he was over-tired; and over-weariness, that is to say, exhaustion, is one of the worst opponents to a calm and satisfying sleep.
The evening came on cool and soft after the ardour of the afternoon, and he began thinking about the proceedings of that time, and felt a little hurt that the doctor had not called upon him to come and act as his assistant, and these thoughts lasted him for about an hour, but did not weary him into dropping off to sleep. They seemed to have the contrary effect, making him irritable; and though he made up his mind to watch the stars peer out through the opalescent sky—he did not call it opalescent, for the simple word dusky took its place—even their soft light had no effect upon him, and to come to the result at once the would-be sleeper gave it up at last for a bad job.
“I’ll go and get something to eat and drink, and then try what I can do.”
In this spirit he rose from his couch, feeling stiff and awkward, grunted, stretched, and then stood in the tent door looking out upon the glorious, star-spangled sky, noting that it was lighter towards the east, where the moon was about to rise.
“Ought to be able to sleep,” he said. “Nice fine night, and it’s all quiet and cool.”
Then his attention was taken up by the soft light which came from the gentlemen’s tent, in which a lamp was burning, while some twenty yards away another was lighting up the opening of the Sheikh’s big tent, showing the figures of the chief and his visitors seated comfortably smoking, as they conversed in a low voice.
Sam made up his mind at once. There would be drinking water in a brass vessel in the gentlemen’s tent, and perhaps something to eat—something to refresh him and give him the night’s rest of which he was so sorely in need.
Walking across the open space, he turned his head for a moment, attracted by a complaining voice as of some one in trouble, and he was about to run off to find out what was the matter. But a repetition of the sound made him jerk himself angrily away.
“One of those beauties!” he muttered. “Talk about a bad-tempered horse, why he’s an angel compared to a camel! Of all the disagreeable, whining, sour, vicious things that ever breathed, they seem about the worst. Gritty, that’s what they are. Get the sand into their tempers when they’re young, I suppose.—Oh, he’s quiet now. Well, it is a beautiful night after all, and the cool air seems to do one good. I expect I shall get to like it when I’ve learnt to ride that brute of a camel, so long as there’s no stabbing and spearing and that sort of thing.”
Sam shook his head very solemnly as these last thoughts came into his head in company with recollections of scraps he had read in the daily papers about encounters with the dervishes, and the horrible massacres they had perpetrated.