“If this isn’t a rum go, count me a goat,” remarked Canby, in his breezy way, when the four resumed easy attitude on the green carpet of the glade. “Young men, you have saved the day, more power to you!”
“And Billy has saved his watch,” teased Henri, and for which his chum handed him a rousing slap on the back.
With the coming of the swarthy servitor, whom Macauley promptly named “Mustapha,” hunger was routed without benefit of surrender. The platter-bearer brought a delicious service of cereals, grapes, figs, oranges and apricots, and coffee as thick as syrup. To crown it all, for the soldiers, “Mustapha” also produced some fragrant tobacco, rolled in husks.
“I think I will register for a month,” enthusiastically advised Canby; “if this isn’t going on the sunny side of the street I will never steal another umbrella.”
His comrade, flat on his back, was blowing smoke rings at the birds.
“I guess these are private preserves,” sleepily commented Billy, “for no other foot has trailed us but the boss and the black. There is no necessity of locking up the diamonds and plate to-night.”
And so the four dreamed in a valley of Lebanon.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THROUGH THE HOLY LAND.
The drumming of a pheasant in a near-by thicket was the first sound of the dawn to the first of the four sleepers who emerged from dreamland—no other than Billy, whose slumber had been haunted by old impressions of war.
Half awake, the boy looked dazedly for the appearance in the clearing of rank upon rank of marching soldiers, moving to the measure of the drum-beat. When, however, he had rubbed his eyes and realized where he was, his ringing laugh not only dissolved the fantasy, but brought Henri to his elbows like a jumping-jack.