If This Cherished Self Of Mine Had Built The
Universe, I Should Have Dwelt With Delight On "The Wonders Of
Creation." As It Was, I Felt Rather The Vainglory Of My Promotion
From Out Of Mere Rooms And Houses Into The Midst Of That Grand,
Dark, Infinite Palace.
And then, too, my head, far from the fire, was in cold latitudes,
and it seemed to me strange
That I should be lying so still and
passive, whilst the sharp night breeze walked free over my cheek,
and the cold damp clung to my hair, as though my face grew in the
earth and must bear with the footsteps of the wind and the falling
of the dew as meekly as the grass of the field. Besides, I got
puzzled and distracted by having to endure heat and cold at the
same time, for I was always considering whether my feet were not
over-devilled and whether my face was not too well iced. And so
when from time to time the watch quietly and gently kept up the
languishing fire, he seldom, I think, was unseen to my restless
eyes. Yet at last, when they called me and said that the morn
would soon be dawning, I rose from a state of half-oblivion not
much unlike to sleep, though sharply qualified by a sort of
vegetable's consciousness of having been growing still colder and
colder for many and many an hour.
CHAPTER XIII - THE DEAD SEA
The grey light of the morning showed us for the first time the
ground which we had chosen for our resting-place. We found that we
had bivouacked upon a little patch of barley plainly belonging to
the men of the caves. The dead bushes which we found so happily
placed in readiness for our fire had been strewn as a fence for the
protection of the little crop. This was the only cultivated spot
of ground which we had seen for many a league, and I was rather
sorry to find that our night fire and our cattle had spread so much
ruin upon this poor solitary slip of corn-land.
The saddling and loading of our beasts was a work which generally
took nearly an hour, and before this was half over daylight came.
We could now see the men of the caves. They collected in a body,
amounting, I should think, to nearly fifty, and rushed down towards
our quarters with fierce shouts and yells. But the nearer they got
the slower they went; their shouts grew less resolute in tone, and
soon ceased altogether. The fellows, however, advanced to a
thicket within thirty yards of us, and behind this "took up their
position." My men without premeditation did exactly that which was
best; they kept steadily to their work of loading the beasts
without fuss or hurry; and whether it was that they instinctively
felt the wisdom of keeping quiet, or that they merely obeyed the
natural inclination to silence which one feels in the early
morning, I cannot tell, but I know that, except when they exchanged
a syllable or two relative to the work they were about, not a word
was said.
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