“Look here! You will have to make some different arrangements from this. I can’t stand it. It is all very well for you fellows: you are as hard as nails and are used to it. I am not.”
“Sir, I very sorry. What I do.”
“I don’t know. You must do something; or else I must appeal to the Amîr.”
The Hut: Impure Water.
I was miserable, and, like a child, struck at the nearest. The Armenian asked if I would lie down and sleep for an hour, for, as far as he could judge, we had come only about half-way. A little further on we saw something darker than the sky, and riding up we made out that it was a hut, a little way off the road. We could hear a trickle of water, and by feeling around found a ditch or irrigation channel, or something of the sort—we couldn’t see what—near the hut. With feverish haste I dismounted, scooped up three or four cupfuls and gulped it down. “Here go the microbes,” I thought. I drank knowingly; who would not? burning with fever, in a tropical heat: but that drink nearly cost me my life. However, the “microbes” lay low for a few days. The Armenian then went off to the hut and hammered at the door. After some time he roused the inmates, and we heard them moving and speaking. Presently the door opened, and a Turkoman, with a lamp in his hand, appeared.
The Armenian told him to light a fire at once and make some tea, as there was a Sirdar of the Court outside with fever. Very soon the tea was brought, and I drank several cupfuls of the hot liquid. Then I took off my spurs and helmet, and lying on the ground by the stream, put my revolver wrapped in a cloak under my head, went off into a heavy sleep.
By-and-bye I heard a cock crow, and dimly saw that the moon had risen. Later on, I was dreamily conscious of a trampling, and trampling, and an incessant neighing. I remember thinking how wearisome it was, that incessant neighing.
Suddenly there was a terrific scream, and I was broad awake in a moment. I found, in the dim light of dawn, that several other people had stopped where we had, and were sleeping. Two of their horses had got loose from their tether ropes, and were reared upright striking at one another.
The Armenian and I were close under them, and he was still sound asleep.