was the deep black mystery of the heavens that hung over my eyes—­not an earthly thing in the way from my own very forehead right up to the end of all space.  I grew proud of my boundless bedchamber.  I might have “found sermons” in all this greatness (if I had I should surely have slept), but such was not then my way.  If this cherished self of mine had built the universe, I should have dwelt with delight on “the wonders of creation.”  As it was, I felt rather the vainglory of my promotion from out of mere rooms and houses into the midst of that grand, dark, infinite palace.

And then, too, my head, far from the fire, was in cold latitudes, and it seemed to me strange that I should be lying so still and passive, whilst the sharp night breeze walked free over my cheek, and the cold damp clung to my hair, as though my face grew in the earth and must bear with the footsteps of the wind and the falling of the dew as meekly as the grass of the field.  Besides, I got puzzled and distracted by having to endure heat and cold at the same time, for I was always considering whether my feet were not over-devilled and whether my face was not too well iced.  And so when from time to time the watch quietly and gently kept up the languishing fire, he seldom, I think, was unseen to my restless eyes.  Yet at last, when they called me and said that the morn would soon be dawning, I rose from a state of half-oblivion not much unlike to sleep, though sharply qualified by a sort of vegetable’s consciousness of having been growing still colder and colder for many and many an hour.

CHAPTER XIII—­THE DEAD SEA

The grey light of the morning showed us for the first time the ground which we had chosen for our resting-place.  We found that we had bivouacked upon a little patch of barley plainly belonging to the men of the caves.  The dead bushes which we found so happily placed in readiness for our fire had been strewn as a fence for the protection of the little crop.  This was the only cultivated spot of ground which we had seen for many a league, and I was rather sorry to find that our night fire and our cattle had spread so much ruin upon this poor solitary slip of corn-land.

The saddling and loading of our beasts was a work which generally took nearly an hour, and before this was half over daylight came.  We could now see the men of the caves.  They collected in a body, amounting, I should think, to nearly fifty, and rushed down towards our quarters with fierce shouts and yells.  But the nearer they got the slower they went; their shouts grew less resolute in tone, and soon ceased altogether.  The fellows, however, advanced to a thicket within thirty yards of us, and behind this “took up their position.”  My men without premeditation did exactly that which was best; they kept steadily to their work of loading the beasts without fuss or hurry; and whether it was that they