358 THE RAINS. 



covert, Kotoff found us a dismantled cowshed on 

 the Selenik property. Here we kindled a poor 

 fire, and tried in vain to dry the clothes which the 

 rain, driven through the broken roof, soaked as fast 

 as we dried them. 



Our only supplies were three or four handsful 

 of rice, and we had a two days' appetite to appease. 

 Hunting about in the cowshed, we found an old 

 paint-pot, and having cleansed it by burning, 

 patched its leaks with clay, and boiled in it the rice 

 and the few bunches of sorrel which we found 

 growing near, we made our first meal since noon of 

 the preceding day. What with the unpleasant taste 

 which the pot possessed and imparted to what was 

 put in it, together with the naturally disagreeable 

 flavour of the coarse sorrel, it was all we could do 

 to eat the mess when made, in spite of hunger, and 

 the root of horse-radish which we boiled with our 

 greens to give them a flavour. After this we brewed 

 our last pinch of tea in the same pot, and imme- 

 diately regretted the waste, as the horse-radish 

 flavour so far predominated that the addition of tea 

 to the water was useless. 



In all our distress we had one consolation. 1 

 had by great good luck saved a box of really first- 

 rate cigars which 1 picked up in Tiflis ; and with 

 these to comfort us, young L. and myself hud- 

 dled together in a corner where there was more 

 wall and fewer crannies than elsewhere, and pre- 



