Everyone knew that whatever happened to others, he at least would hold on.

Everyone described him as "hard as nails." Each day seemed more intolerable than the last, each night a perceptible narrowing of the fiery circle in which they lived.

They seemed to be drawing towards a culminating horror that grew hourly more palpable, more monstrously menacing--a horror that drained their strength even from afar.
"It's going to kill us this time," declared little Robey, the youngest subaltern, to whom the nights were a torment unspeakable.

He had been within an ace of heat apoplexy more than once, and his nerves were stretched almost to breaking-point.
But Merryon went doggedly on, hewing his unswerving way through all.

The monsoon was drawing near, and the whole tortured earth seemed to be waiting in dumb expectation.
Night after night a glassy moon came up, shining, immense and awful, through a thick haze of heat.