Page:In times of peril.djvu/266

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246
IN TIMES OF PERIL.

for Dick to get out of his skin, and to wrap himself from head to foot in the dark-blue cotton cloth that the woman had given.

"I felt like an impostor, getting that cloth under false pretenses, Dick."

"Oh, nonsense," Dick said. "The woman gave it for what the fakir could do, and I am sure your advice was better than the fakir would have given, so she is no loser. If ever we come on one of these sort of trips again we will bring some quinine and some strong pills, and then we really may do some good."

Dick took no pains about coloring his face or hands, for both were burned so brown with exposure to the sun that he had no fear that a casual glance at them at night, even in torchlight, would detect that he was not a native.

"Now, Ned, I promised to stop for twenty-four hours, if you liked, to soak that head of hair in a pond; what do you say?"

"No," Ned said; "it is terribly filthy, but we will waste no time. To-morrow, when we halt, we will try and make an oven and bake it. I will try to-morrow to get a fresh cloth for myself and throw these horrible rags away. Even a fakir must have a new cloth sometimes."

They made a very long march that night, and had the next evening a success equal to that of the night before. Another long night-tramp followed, and on getting up at the end of the day's sleep, Ned collected some dry sticks and lit a fire. Then he made a hole in the ground, and filed it with glowing embers. When the embers were just extinct, he cleared them out, took off his wig, rolled it up, and put it into the hot oven he had thus prepared, and covered the top in with a sod. Then carefully looking to see that no natives were in sight, he threw away his old rags, and Dick and he enjoyed a dip in a small