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When things returned to normal it was discovered that all the charguls had been removed from the left hand side of the carriages, railside Arabs knew that we would be occupied gawking and took advantage of our distraction; they found charguls useful too.

No inmate of the oubliette could have been more lonely, and yet life was accessible, and even near. A month went by. The solitary man of the camp fished and shot, ate, drank, wandered, slept, and saw no face and heard no voice. He had run out of supplies, and having pencilled a note to that effect, had slipped it, with a five-dollar bill, under the door of the railside shanty.

The little weatherboard railside station was void of life, and there was not a soul in sight. The passenger had given up the ticket for his sleeping-berth an hour before, and had announced his intention to stop over at this lonely place.

The railside shanty stood at a height of some four thousand feet above sea-level, but the mountains heaved vast shoulders and white heads about him. Below, in the tremendous gorge, a torrent ran recklessly, tearing at its rocky confines with raging hands, and crying out in many voices like a multitude bent on some deed of vengeance hurrying, delaying, turning on itself, maddening itself.

Then he walked back to the railside shanty, found the canvas bale, and slowly and with great exertion lugged it down the slope and along the trail. He panted and perspired at this task; for though he was sturdily set, and large of limb and stature, he was obviously unused to that kind of work, and by the time it was over he was fain to throw himself upon the moss and rest for a full half-hour.

With the start of the day deficiencies were discovered in our equipment, while we had tea, sugar and dried milk we hadn't any water or the means of containing or boiling it. One difficulty was overcome when we bartered cigarettes for a petrol can from some railside Arabs.

At North Berwick there was a maniacal stampede toward the little house by the railside, where they sell such immense quantities of sponge-cake, which is very sweet and very yellow, but which lies rather more heavily on the stomach than raw turnips, as I ascertained one day from actual experience. This is not stated because I have any spite against this little house by the railside.

When they came into the country she was busy pointing out to him, with an even more excited delight the common railside objects. It was more than a year since he had been in the country; and he had to be told earnestly and more than once that a cow was a cow and a sheep a baa-lamb, for he was inclined to class them all alike under the genus gee-gee.