Then another "spurt" of a hundred yards and another rest at the end of it.

All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules and without ever changing the team.

At least we kept it up ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert.
It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon.

And it was so hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of the day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel deliberation! It was so trying to give one's watch a good long undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding--and truly and seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the desert trip nothing but a harsh reality--a thirsty, sweltering, longing, hateful reality! Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours--that was what we accomplished.

It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles an hour.