But The Glare Of The
Sun Was Gone, And After Awhile A Stillness Settled Down Upon This
Company Of Uncle Sam's Servants And Their Followers.
(In the Army
Regulations, wives are not rated except as "camp followers.")
But even this short respite from the glare of the sun was soon to
end; for before the crack of dawn, or, as it seemed to us,
shortly after midnight, came such a clatter with the fires and
the high-pressure engine and the sparks, and what all they did in
that wild and reckless land, that further rest was impossible,
and we betook ourselves with our mattresses to the staterooms,
for another attempt at sleep, which, however, meant only failure,
as the sun rose incredibly early on that river, and we were glad
to take a hasty sponge from a basin of rather thick looking
river-water, and go again out on deck, where we could always get
a cup of black coffee from the Chinaman.
And thus began another day of intolerable glare and heat.
Conversation lagged; no topic seemed to have any interest except
the thermometer, which hung in the coolest place on the boat; and
one day when Major Worth looked at it and pronounced it one
hundred and twenty-two in the shade, a grim despair seized upon
me, and I wondered how much more heat human beings could endure.
There was nothing to relieve the monotony of the scenery. On each
side of us, low river banks, and nothing between those and the
horizon line.
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