CHAPTER LII
"Thalassa! Thalassa!"
Another of those horrible, red mornings, with a brass circle ofhorizon flaming all around in the most extraordinary fireworks toppedby an azure zenith, found them still crawling south-westwards makingperhaps a mile an hour.
Disjointed words and sentences kept framing themselves in the man'smind; above all, a sentence he had read long ago in Greek, somewhere.Where had he read that? Oh, in Xenophon, of course. In _The Retreat ofthe Ten Thousand._ The Master gulped it aloud, in a dead voice:
"Most terrible of all is--the desert--for it is full-of a great want."
After a while he knew that he was trying to laugh.
"A great want!" he repeated. "A great--"
Presently it was night again.
The Master's mind cleared. Yes, there was the woman, lying in the sandnear him. But where was the date-stick basket? Where was the last ofthe food? He tried to think.
He could remember nothing. But reason told him they must have eatenthe last of the food and thrown the basket away. His shoulders feltstrangely light. What was this? The water-bag was gone, too?
But that did not matter. There had been only a little of thatchemicalized water left, anyhow. Perhaps they had drunk it all, orbathed their faces and necks with it. Who could tell? The water-sackwas gone; that was all he knew.
A great fear stabbed him. The water-jar! Was that still on his back?As he felt the pull of a thong, and dragged the jar around so that hecould blink at it, a wonderful relief for a moment deadened his pain.
"_Allah iselmak!_" he croaked, blessing the scant water the jar stillheld. He realized the woman was looking at him.
"Water!" he whispered. "Let us drink again--and go on!"
She nodded silently. He loosed the thong, took the jar and peered intoits neck, gauging the small amount of water still there. Then he heldit to her lips.
She seemed to be drinking, but only seemed. Frowning, as she finished,he once more squinted into the jar with bleared eyes. His voice waseven, dull, ominous as he accused:
"You drank nothing. You are trying to save water for me!"
She shook her head in negation, but he penetrated the lie. His teethgleamed through his stubble of beard, and his eyes glinted redly underthe hood of his ragged burnous as he cried:
"Will you drink?"
"I tell you--I have drunk!"
Slowly he tilted the jar toward the thirsty sands.
"Drink, now, or I pour all this on the ground!"
Beaten, she extended a quivering hand. They shared the last of thewater. The man took less than a third. Then they set out again on theendless road of pain.
Was it that same day, or the next, that the man fell and could notrise again? The woman did not know. Something had got into her brainand was dancing there and would not stop; something blent of sunand glare, sand, mirage, torturing thirst. There was a little grayscorpion, too--but no, _that_ had been crushed to a pulp by the man'sheel. Or had it not? Well--
The man! Was there a man? Where was he? Here, of course, on the bakedearth.
As she cradled his head up into her lap and drew the shelter of herburnous over it, she became rational again. Her hot, dry hand caressedhis face. After a while he was blinking up at her.
"Bara Miyan! Violator of the salt!" he croaked, and struck ather feebly. And after another time, she perceived that they werestaggering on and on once more.
The woman wondered what had happened to her head, now that the sun hadbored quite through. Surely that must make a difference, must it not?
A jackal barked. But this, they knew, must be illusion.
No jackals lived so far from any habitation of mankind. The manblinked into the glare, across which sand-devils of whirlwinds wereonce more gyrating over a whiteness ending in dunes that seemed to bepeppered with camel-grass.
Another mirage! Grass could grow only near the coast. And now thatthey had both been tortured to death by Jannati Shahr men and beenflung into Jehannum, how could there be any coast? It seemed sopreposterous.
It was all so very simple that the man laughed--silently.
Where had that woman gone to? Why, he thought there surely had been awoman with him! But now he stood all alone. This was very strange.
"I must remember to ask them if there wasn't a woman," thought he."This is an extraordinary place! People come and go in such a manner!"
The man felt a dull irritation, and smeared the sand out of his eyes.How had that sand got there? Naturally, from having laid on one ofthose dunes. There seemed to be no particular reason for lying ona dune, under the fire-box of an engine, so the man sat up and keptblinking and rubbing his eyes.
"This is the best mirage, yet," he reflected. "The palms look real.And the water--it sparkles. Those white blotches--one would say theywere houses!"
Indifferent, yet interested, too, in the appearance of reality,the man remained sitting on the dune, squinting from under his tornburnous.
The mirage took form as a line of dazzling white houses along a sea ofcobalt and indigo. And to add to the reality of the mirage, some milesaway, he could see two boats with sails all green and blue from thereflection of the luster of the water.
The man's eyes fell. He studied his feet. They were naked, now, cutto the bone, caked with blood and sand. Odd, that they did not hurt.Where were his babooches? He seemed to remember something about havingtaken some ragged ones from the feet of some woman or other, a verylong time ago, and having bound his own upon her mangled feet.
"I'll ask the people in those houses, down there," thought he; and onhands and knees started to crawl down the slope of the dunes towardthe dazzling white things that looked like houses.
Something echoed at the back of his brain:
"_You must ask her if this is real! Unless you both see it, you mustnot go!_"
He paused. "There was a woman, then!" he gasped. "But--where is shenow?"
Realization that she had disappeared sobered him. He got up, gropedwith emaciated hands before his face as he turned back away from thewhite houses and stumbled eastward.
All at once he saw something white lying on the sand, under a cookingglare of sunlight. Memory returned. He fell on his knees beside thewoman and caught her up in quivering arms.
After a while, he noticed there was blood on her left arm. Blood, inthe bend of the elbow, coagulated there.
This puzzled him. All he could think was that she might have cutherself on her _jambiyeh_, when she had fallen. He did not know then,nor did he ever know, that he himself had fallen at this spot; thatshe had thought him dying; that she had tried to cut her arm and givehim her blood to drink; that she had fainted in the effort. Some lastremnants of strength welled up in him. He stooped, got her across hisshoulder, struggled to his feet and went staggering up the dune.
Here he paused, swaying drunkenly.
Strange! The very same mirage presented itself to his eyes--bluesails, turquoise sea, feathery palms, white houses.
"By God!" he croaked. "Mirages--they don't last, this way! That'sreal--that's real water, by the living God!"
Up from dark profundities of tortured memory arose the cry ofXenophon's bold Greeks when, after their long torment, they had ofa sudden fronted blue water. At sight of the little British consularstation of Batn el Hayil, on the Gulf of Farsan:
"_Thalassa!_" he cried. "_Thalassa, thalassa!_" (The sea, the sea!)