The weather, by the time we had ridden a couple of
miles farther, began to lower, and presently, large heavy drops of rain
fell, and preserving their globular shape, rolled like peas, or rather
like bullets, amidst the small finely pulverized dust of the sandy path.
"Umbrella" was the word--but this was a luxury unknown to our military
friends. However, the colonel immediately unfurled a blanket from
beneath the sheepskin, and sticking his head through a hole in the
centre of it, there he stalked like a herald in his tabard, with the
blanket hanging down before and behind him. As for the captain he
dismounted, disencumbered himself of his trowsers, which he crammed
under the mat that served him for a saddle, and taking off his shirt, he
stowed it away in the capacious crown of his cocked hat, while he once
more bestrid his Bucephalus in puris naturalibus, but conversing with
all the ease in the world, and the most perfect sangfroid, while the
thunder shower came down in bucketfuls. In about half an hour, we
arrived at the skirt of the brushwood or jungle, and found on our left
hand some rice fields, which from appearance we could not have
distinguished from young wheat; but on a nearer approach, we perceived
that the soil, if soil it could be called on which there was no walking,
was a soft mud, the only passages through the fields, and along the
ridges, being by planks, on which several of the labourers were standing
as we passed, one of whom turning to look at us, slipped off, and
instantly sunk amidst the rotten slime up to his waist.
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