carce
dared to breathe.

It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one
fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of
the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. "I
tell you it's 'ot," says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and
the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick
of dropping out the letter "h." To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he
had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly
at the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise
was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a
grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether
with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and
there spy out even in these memoirs.

The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the
greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the
sun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like
rheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since,
on the lines in our Scotch psalm:--

"The moon by night thee shall not smite,
Nor yet the sun by day;"

and indeed it was only by God's blessing that we were neither of us
sun-smitten.

At last, about two, it was beyond men's bearing, and there was now
temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being now
got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side
of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers.

"As well one death as another," said Alan, and slipped over the edge and
dropped on the ground on the shadowy side.

I followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was I
and so giddy with that long exposure. Here, then, we lay for an hour or
two, aching from head to foot, as weak as water, and lying quite naked
to the eye of any soldier who should have strolled that way. None came,
however, all passing by on the other side; so that our rock continued to
be our shield even in this new position.

Presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldiers
were now lying closer along the river-side, Alan proposed that we should
try a start. I was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world;
and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome
to me; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and b