noon
Nevertheless , they were fierce in attack as tigers , rapid in swoop as vultures , and fought flying in such fashion that the cavalry lost more in this fruitless , worthless work than they would have done in a second Hohenlinden or Austerlitz . Moreover , the heat was intense , water was bad and very rare , dysentery came with the scorch and the toil of this endless charge ; the chief in command , M. le Marquis de Chateauroy , swore heavily as he saw many of his best men dropping off like sheep in a murrain , and he offered two hundred napoleons to whosoever should bring either the dead Sheik 's head or the living beauty of Djelma . One day the Chasseurs had pitched their camp where a few barren , withered trees gave a semblance of shelter , and a little thread of brackish water oozed through the yellow earth . It was high noon ; the African sun was at its fiercest ; far as the eye could reach there was only one boundless , burning , unendurable glitter of parching sand and cloudless sky -- brazen beneath , brazen above -- till the desert and the heavens touched , and blent in one tawny , fiery glow in the measureless distance . The men lay under canvas , dead-beat , half-naked , without the power to do anything except to fight like thirst-maddened dogs for a draught at the shallow stream that they and their breathless horses soon drained dry . Even Raoul de Chateauroy , though his frame was like an Arab 's , and knit into Arab endurance , was stretched like a great bloodhound , chained by the sultry oppression . He was ruthless , inflexible , a tyrant to the core , and sharp and swift as steel in his rigor , but he was a fine soldier , and never spared himself any of the hardships that his regiment had to endure under him .