midday
About eleven o'clock Orme came on watch , and I turned in , having nothing to report . Soon I was fast asleep , notwithstanding the anxieties that , had I been less weary , might well have kept me wakeful . For these were many . On the coming night we must slip through the Fung , and before midday on the morrow we should either have entered Mur , or failed to have entered Mur , which meant -- death , or , what was worse , captivity among barbarians , and subsequent execution , preceded probably by torture of one sort or another . Of course , however , we might come thither without accident , travelling with good guides on a dark night , for , after all , the place was big , and the road lonely and little used , so that unless we met a watch , which , we were told , would not be there , our little caravan had a good chance to pass unobserved . Shadrach seemed to think that we should do so , but the worst of it was that , like Quick , I did not trust Shadrach . Even Maqueda , the Lady of the Abati , she whom they called Child of Kings , had her doubts about him , or so it had seemed to me .