“Here are their ponies,” replied Bourne, peering about in the darkness. “Tut, tut, tut! Here they are upon the ground, fast asleep too. Here, Ned—Chris! Wake up, my lads; you can’t lie there.”
Ned’s father was never more away from the truth in an assertion. In fact, he was quite wrong, for the two boys were proving that they could lie there, and were sleeping heavily, careless of snakes, and ponies’ or mules’ hoofs, careless of everything but obeying the stern dictates of a monitor who bade them sleep and make up for lost time.
Hunger and thirst did not exist to them then, nor did they to any other member of the expedition, for when day came brightly, not very long after, it was to look down upon the strange group of horses, mules, packs, and men, lying anyhow upon a wide down-like place covered with thin, short, crisp grass, which the animals were browsing upon contentedly enough.
Fortunately for the party there was no sign of danger far or near—nothing but rolling down for a few miles, and beyond that mountains towering up towards the clouds, looking clear and distinct in the pearly grey of morning, and apparently close at hand, though some sixty or seventy miles away.
Chapter Seventeen.
Water, Water everywhere, but—
“Hallo! What’s that?” said Chris softly, as he lay on his left side gazing at an elevation about a couple of feet from his nose; and it was some time before he could make out that it was a sack, stuffed so full that it threatened to burst the coarse stitches down one side.
His head felt confused and thick. His thinking apparatus would not work properly, but seemed to be struggling to carry on the narrative of some weary dream in which there had been snakes, heat, thirst, and riding, till his bones seemed to ache and he felt sore all over.