To pass away the time and keep life in us, for we were almost frozen with the wet and cold, we ate some tinned food and biscuits that we carried in our saddle-bags, and drank a dram of brandy from Quick's flask.

This warmed us a little, though I do not think that a bottleful would have raised our spirits.

Higgs, whom we all loved, was gone, dead, probably, by that time; the Abati had lost or deserted us, and we three white men appeared to have wandered into a savage stronghold, where, as soon as we were seen, we should be trapped like birds in a net, and butchered at our captor's will.

Certainly the position was not cheerful.
Overwhelmed with physical and mental misery, I began to doze; Orme grew silent, and the Sergeant, having remarked that there was no need to bother, since what must be must be, consoled himself in a corner by humming over and over again the verse of the hymn which begins: "There is a blessed home beyond this land of woe, Where trials never come nor tears of sorrow flow." Fortunately for us, shortly before dawn the "tears of sorrow" as represented by the rain ceased to flow.

The sky cleared, showing the stars; suddenly the vault of heaven was suffused with a wonderful and pearly light, although on the earth the mist remained so thick that we could see nothing.