when they _do_ mean to fight."

"But the Arabs are only half savages; and besides they are quite unlike
other people. Why, their lucky day is Friday, and their unlucky day
Wednesday."

"Yes," said Tom Strachan, "and Robinson Crusoe called his savage Friday,
and these fellows calls their Prophet Tuesday."

"Tuesday! What _do_ you mean?" asked Major Elmfoot.

"Mardi is the French for Tuesday, is it not, sir?"

"Strachan, you are really too bad, to make such execrable puns in the
middle of the desert."

"That is it, sir? I thought even my poor flowers of speech might be
welcome in such a barren waste!"

Soon after this the colonel was called up to the brigadier, and when he
returned he communicated what he had been told to his officers. The low
hills being found clear of the enemy, it was intended to occupy them at
once, and then if possible to advance upon the camp and the wells, and
carry that position before nightfall. But this depended on what
daylight they had, for rather than risk being overtaken by darkness in
an unfavourable position, it was determined to form a zereba and wait
for the advance till next day.

"It is just four o'clock," said Strachan, looking at his watch as he
returned to his company; "and surely there must be a fair chance of
carrying the wells before sunset, for I see a lot of the enemy on the
hills beyond. Therefore I shall risk a drink," and he put his water-
bottle to his lips accordingly.

"Hurrah! So will I," said Green.

"I have been fighting down the feeling of thirst for the last two hours.
Do you know," he added, after a refreshing and yet a tantalising
irrigation of the mouth and throat, "I have been haunted by a sort of
waking dream while plodding on in silence this afternoon. There was an
old man who used to bring fruit and ginger-beer to the cricket-field at
my school, and he has kept rising up in my memory so vividly that I
could see every wrinkle in his face, and the strings which kept down the
corks of his brown stone bottles as vividly as if they were before me."

"I wish they were!" cried Tom. "By Jove, what a trade the man might
drive if he could be transported here just now."

"Oh! And I have often scorned that nectarial fluid," groaned Edwards,
"or only considered it as a tolerable ingredient of shandy--"

"Silence!" cried Strachan.

"Don't utter that word, or I shall simply go mad. It is quite bad
enough of the exasperating Green to allude to the