It was not far from dawn, but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was thick with a hot murkiness that I cannot describe.

The others were still sleeping.
Presently it began to grow light enough to read, so I drew out a little pocket copy of the "Ingoldsby Legends" which I had brought with me, and read "The Jackdaw of Rheims." When I got to where "A nice little boy held a golden ewer, Embossed, and filled with water as pure As any that flows between Rheims and Namur," literally I smacked my cracking lips, or rather tried to smack them.
The mere thought of that pure water made me mad.

If the Cardinal had been there with his bell, book, and candle, I would have whipped in and drunk his water up; yes, even if he had filled it already with the suds of soap "worthy of washing the hands of the Pope," and I knew that the whole consecrated curse of the Catholic Church should fall upon me for so doing.

I almost think that I must have been a little light-headed with thirst, weariness and the want of food; for I fell to thinking how astonished the Cardinal and his nice little boy and the jackdaw would have looked to see a burnt up, brown-eyed, grizzly-haired little elephant hunter suddenly bound between them, put his dirty face into the basin, and swallow every drop of the precious water.

The idea amused me so much that I laughed or rather cackled aloud, which woke the others, and they began to rub _their_ dirty faces and drag _their_ gummed-up lips and eyelids apart.
As soon as we were all well awake we began to discuss the situation, which was serious enough.