One of the men dashed a
glass of water in his face, which brought him back to his senses. It was
only a nightmare, we found. Dutchy dreamed he had been injured in a
railway accident and had been taken for dead to the morgue. He tried to
let them know that he was alive, but couldn't utter a sound, until finally
he burst out with the yells that roused the camp. Then, as he awoke with
the horror of the dream still on him, his eyes fell on the two stretcher
beds that looked like biers and the black coffin-like sleeping bag. It was
not much wonder that Dutchy was frightened. The camp did certainly have a
most ghastly appearance in the vague moonlight that filtered through the
trees, and it must have been still more gruesome to see the coffin and
biers suddenly burst open and the corpses come running toward him. To
prevent any further nightmare we set Dutchy's sleeping bag under the "A"
tent, where he would be saved the horror of again waking up in a morgue.
Pack Harness.
In the morning our friends broke camp and started westward. Dutchy and I
watched them packing up their goods into a couple of very compact bundles,
which they strapped to their backs with a peculiar pack harness. I took
careful note of the way the harness was put together, and when we returned
to the island we made two sets for use on our tramping expeditions.
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