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I wanted Sunday, but out of consideration for the concert that the actors and employes of the Opera give Sunday night for their own benefit I have selected Monday. Frederick Lemaitre called. He kissed my hands and wept. It has been raining for two or three days. The rain has soaked the plains, the cannon-wheels would sink into the ground, and the sortie has therefore had to be deferred.
I had to get up in the middle of the night to secure my insect-boxes, rice, and other perishable articles, and to find a dry place to sleep in, for my bed was soaked. Fresh leaks kept forming as the rain continued, and w e all passed a very miserable and sleepless night. In the morning the sun shone brightly, and everything was put out to dry.
To know when it is soaked, take a broad-bladed knife that is very bright, and thrust it into the centre; draw it out instantly, and if the paste in any degree adheres, return the cake to the oven, and close it up.
When I awoke I was standing by the open window shivering with cold, but the black-plumed hearse and the driver were gone. I dreamed this dream again in March last, and again awoke beside the open window. Last night the dream came again. You remember how it was raining; when I awoke, standing at the open window, my night-dress was soaked." "But where did I come into the dream?" I asked.
Our stock of provisions consisted of nothing but a piece of dry meat and some soaked and half-moldy biscuits. I gazed around me scared and frightened. I could not understand the awful truth. And yet of what consequence was it in regard to any new danger?
Then the thought came to me that I could eat my moccasins if I soaked them soft and broiled them over the coals. After I had eaten them, I was a little stronger and kept on until I reached this place, when my strength gave out again, and I built a fire, as I thought for the last time, for I did not expect to ever leave here. When you came, I heard your voice, but I thought I was dreaming."
Thus, on his arrival, Clive found that the enemy were close at hand. He spent the remainder of the night making his dispositions, while his troops bivouacked in an extensive mango-grove on ground already soaked by the rain, which was still falling. The mango-grove was 800 yards in length and 300 in breadth, and was surrounded by a bank and a ditch.
Roused to immediate practical service and with all her superstitious terrors at an end, old Priscilla took off a soaked little velvet hat and began to unfasten a wet mass of soft silk that clung round the fragile little figure.
Tommy sprang to his feet with an oath which would have shocked a woman of lesser heart, ripped loose the sturdy reef-knots and flung back the flaps of the tent. The trio peered out. It was not a heartening spectacle. A few water- soaked tents formed the miserable foreground, from which the streaming ground sloped to a foaming gorge. Down this ramped a mountain torrent.
The horses fared better than the men for, while they were only eight to a car, we were forty or more; and in the same kind of cars, too. They look like our ordinary cattle cars but are only about one-half as big. Forty men, with full equipment, have some difficulty to crowd into one, let alone to sit or lie down. And, of course, everything we had was soaked through.
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