The Camp Bed in a Shower.

[Illustration:  Fig. 210.  A Poncho.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 211.  Camp Bed in the Rain.]

As a precaution against rain, a tall post was set up at the head and another at the foot of the bed, and a rope was stretched over the posts with the ends fastened to stakes driven into the ground.  Over this rope a rubber “poncho” was laid to keep off the rain.  A “poncho,” by the way, is a blanket of rubber cloth about 4-1/2 feet wide and 6 feet long, in the center of which is a slit through which you can put your head; then the rubber cloth falls over you like a cape, as in Fig. 210, and makes a perfect protection against rain.  The ponchos these men had were not quite long enough to cover the whole bed, so they fastened umbrellas to the head posts, as shown in Fig. 211.  During a shower in the woods the rain comes straight down in large drops, caused by the water collecting on the leaves.  To prevent these large drops from splashing through the umbrellas, they laid pieces of cloth over the umbrellas, which served, like the fly of a tent, to check the fall of rain drops.

[Illustration:  Fig. 212.  Umbrella with Fly.]

A Nightmare.

I slept in the mummy case that night and Dutchy in the first sleeping bag.  It must have been about midnight when I was awakened by a most unearthly yell.  It sent the cold chills running up and down my back.  A second scream brought me into action, and I struggled to throw back the head flap, which had become caught.  It seemed an age before I could open it and wriggle out of the bag.  Dutchy was sitting up in bed with a look of horror on his face, and his whole body was in a tremor of fear.  One of the men dashed a glass of water in his face, which brought him back to his senses.  It was only a nightmare, we found.  Dutchy dreamed he had been injured in a railway accident and had been taken for dead to the morgue.  He tried to let them know that he was alive, but couldn’t utter a sound, until finally he burst out with the yells that roused the camp.  Then, as he awoke with the horror of the dream still on him, his eyes fell on the two stretcher beds that looked like biers and the black coffin-like sleeping bag.  It was not much wonder that Dutchy was frightened.  The camp did certainly have a most ghastly appearance in the vague moonlight that filtered through the trees, and it must have been still more gruesome to see the coffin and biers suddenly burst open and the corpses come running toward him.  To prevent any further nightmare we set Dutchy’s sleeping bag under the “A” tent, where he would be saved the horror of again waking up in a morgue.

Pack Harness.