noon
Then when we had done drinking we tore off our clothes and sat down in the pool , absorbing the moisture through our parched skins . You , Harry , my boy , who have only to turn on a couple of taps to summon `` hot '' and `` cold '' from an unseen , vasty cistern , can have little idea of the luxury of that muddy wallow in brackish tepid water . After a while we rose from it , refreshed indeed , and fell to on our `` biltong , '' of which we had scarcely been able to touch a mouthful for twenty-four hours , and ate our fill . Then we smoked a pipe , and lay down by the side of that blessed pool , under the overhanging shadow of its bank , and slept till noon . All that day we rested there by the water , thanking our stars that we had been lucky enough to find it , bad as it was , and not forgetting to render a due share of gratitude to the shade of the long-departed da Silvestra , who had set its position down so accurately on the tail of his shirt . The wonderful thing to us was that the pan should have lasted so long , and the only way in which I can account for this is on the supposition that it is fed by some spring deep down in the sand . Having filled both ourselves and our water-bottles as full as possible , in far better spirits we started off again with the moon .