About three o'clock
in the afternoon
There we lay panting , and every now and again moistening our lips from our scanty supply of water . Had we followed our inclinations we should have finished all we possessed in the first two hours , but we were forced to exercise the most rigid care , for if our water failed us we knew that very soon we must perish miserably . But everything has an end , if only you live long enough to see it , and somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening . About three o'clock in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no longer . It would be better to die walking that to be killed slowly by heat and thirst in this dreadful hole . So taking each of us a little drink from our fast diminishing supply of water , now warmed to about the same temperature as a man 's blood , we staggered forward . We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness .