Most of the officers at the tables soon became highly elated. That is
the way when your stomach has been fed on hard rations and you have
had fourteen days of the sun. They then all began shouting and singing
and not talking so much. But still they were all devilishly keen to
know about the siege, and who had fought best, and who had been
killed.

I left them in what remains of a little barricaded and fortified hotel
disputing away in rather a foolish fashion, because they were more or
less inebriate and the sun had burned them badly. And speeding to my
_cache_, I drew out my two blankets and my waterproof. While I had
been forgetting other things, I had learned two new things--how to
sleep and how to shoot--and now since there was no more need to
practise the one, I would do the other.




PART III-THE SACK

I

THE PALACE


16th August, 1900.

* * * * *

The next morning (which was only yesterday!) I awoke in much the same