“Great Scott!” I gasped, “carry me out.” For the tent, put up on the red-hot plain at midday, felt like a baker’s oven on Good Friday eve. I have never been in a baker’s oven on Good Friday eve, but I know what it is like.
They did not carry me out, but the Armenian brought me a charpoy, also burning hot. I lay quite still on it, simmered gently, and waited for death.
At last, it must have been after several years, I fancy, a wind came: it was a scorching one; there was no “healing in its breath,” and I dried up still more. Then a whirlwind and a pillar of dust came sweeping across the camp, tearing out the tent-pegs and overturning the tents in its course. This roused me, and I crawled to the door of the tent to see if the Amîr’s wigwam had escaped. His Highness was not in a tent, but in a khirgar that had been prepared some days before. It was interlaced with shrubs; and water had been brought, with considerable trouble, in a trench or stream from Mazar. Men outside the khirgar were constantly throwing up the water with wooden shovels on to the leafy covering. The khirgar had escaped the whirlwind.
The Armenian went off to try and get me something to drink or eat, for we had had no breakfast. All that the chief of the Commissariat Department could give him was a small piece of bread. He begged us not to inform His Highness, and promised that everything should be in readiness the next day. After a search, the Armenian discovered that my rascally cook had concealed some mutton in a dirty cloth: this he brought me, with some brown-looking snow water, and a little whiskey from the medical stores. I ate, drank, and was thankful.
At four in the afternoon a piece of ice arrived—the ice is saved from the winter in ice pits—and half an hour afterwards the Amîr sent me some ice pudding, which I devoured rapidly before it all became water. At five came dinner, but then I was at one mind with the Armenian: he said, “My wish is not I eat: very much drink I take it.”
At seven in the evening the troops marched off again, for the Amîr had decided to travel at midnight to escape the heat. There were a great many of us: the Court, the Harem, the army, and the baggage of us all. For some time before, notice had been given to the towns and villages on the route to lay in stores of grain and firewood, and to gather in their flocks from the mountains. There were of us about eight thousand men, ten thousand horses, three thousand camels, and three or four elephants.
Midnight Marching: Stopped on the Road.
When the troops had gone my men commenced loading up the pack-horses again. They took three hours over it, and many of the packs fastened up in the dark slipped and fell after we started: this necessitated a halt each time to reload. I was not in a cheerful state, either of mind or body, for the heat had been too much for me. I had fever rather badly, and was aching in every bone.
It was pitch dark; I could not see my horse’s head nor my own hand held up. Before we got out of the camp on to the road I heard a pack-horse that had broken loose tearing about like a mad thing. We could tell where he was by the clattering of his chain. Once, in the darkness, he rushed close by me. I was convinced he would charge into some one, probably me, because no one could set my leg when it was broken. However, we got on to the road at last: we could tell it by the different ring of the horses’ hoofs.
The baggage slipped and a pack tumbled off so frequently, that at last I had not patience to wait with the baggage men while they loaded up again, and the Armenian and I rode on accompanied by a soldier. I had operated on this man some time before; he therefore politely came two days’ journey with me.