Making the camel kneel, Damocles de Warrenne removed its saddle,
fastened its rein-cord tightly to a post, fed it, and then detached
the saddle-bags that hung flatly on either side of the saddle frame,
as well as a patent-leather sword-cover which contained a sword of
very different pattern from that for which it had been made.

Entering the hut, of which the doors and windows were bolted on the
outside, he flung open the shutters of the glassless windows, lit a
candle, and prepared to eat a frugal meal. From the saddlebags he took
bread, eggs, chocolate, sardines, biscuits and apples. With a mixture
of permanganate of potash, tea and cold water from the well, if the
puddle at the bottom of a deep hole could be so termed, he made a
drink that, while drinkable by one who has known worse, was unlikely
to cause an attack upon an enfeebled constitution, of cholera,
enteric, dysentery or any other of India's specialities. What would he
not have given for a clean whisky-and-soda in the place of the
nauseating muck--but what should be the end of a man who, in his
position, turned to _alcohol_ for help and comfort? "The last state of
that man ..."

After striking a judicious balance between what he should eat for
dinner and what he should reserve for breakfast, he fell to, ate
sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which
the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the
bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed
thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a
dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from
which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly
_oont-wallah_ pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel of
the Indian Medical Service "pinched" them for splints.) A most