nd-bag, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief,
for a pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark?--something about a root,
a stub in the ground sticking into the back. "You couldn't lie along a
hair?"---"Well, no: here's another stub. It needs but a moment for the
conversation to become general,--about roots under the shoulder, stubs
in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to
balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground, the
heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply. The whole
camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake; but
the guides who are asleep outside make more noise than the owls. Water
is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning;
everybody is now determined to go to sleep in good earnest. A last
good-night. There is an appalling silence. It is interrupted in the most
natural way in the world. Somebody has got the start, and gone to sleep.
He proclaims the fact. He seems to have been brought up on the seashore,
and to know how to make all the deep-toned noises of the restless ocean.
He is also like a war-horse; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse. How
malignantly he snorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in
another key! One head is raised after another.

"Who is that?"

"Somebody punch him."

"Turn him over."

"Reason with him."

The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mistake. He was before, it
appears, on his most agreeable side. The camp rises in indignation.
The sleeper sits up in bewilderment. Before he can go off again, two or
three others have preceded him. They are all alike. You never can
judge what a person is when he is awake. There are here half a dozen
disturbers of the peace who should be put in solitary confinement. At
midnight, when a philosopher crawls out to sit on a log by the fire,
and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor and mezzo-soprano is going on in the
shanty, with a chorus always coming in at the wrong time. Those who
are not asleep want to know why the smoker doesn't go to bed. He is
requested to get some water, to throw on another log, to see what
time it is, to note whether it looks like rain. A buzz of conversation
arises. She is sure she heard something behind the shanty. He says it is
all nonsense. "Perhaps, however, it might be a mouse."

"Mercy! Are there mice?"

"Plenty."

"Then that's what I heard nibbling by my head. I shan't sleep a wink! Do