rier the parching earth.

All the water gave out on the morning after I had bearded Ar-hap in his
den, and our strength went with it. No earthly heat was ever like it,
and it drank our vitality up from every pore. Water there was down
below in the bitter, streaming gulf, but so noisome that we dared not
even bathe there; here there was none but the faintest trickle. All
discipline was at an end; all desire save such as was born of thirst.
Heru I saw as often as I wished as she lay gasping, with poor Si at her
feet, in the women's verandah; but the heat was so tremendous that I
gazed at her with lack-lustre eyes, staggering to and fro amongst the
courtyard shadows, without nerve to plot her rescue or strength to
carry out anything my mind might have conceived.

We prayed for rain and respite. Ar-hap had prayed with a wealth of
picturesque ceremonial. We had all prayed and cursed by turns, but
still the heavens would not relent, and the rain came not.

At last the stifling heat and vapour reached an almost intolerable
pitch. The earth reeked with unwholesome humours no common summer could
draw from it, the air was sulphurous and heavy, while overhead the sky
seemed a tawny dome, from edge to edge of angry clouds, parting now and
then to let us see the red disc threatening us.

Hour after hour slipped by until, when evening was upon us, the clouds
drew together, and thunder, with a continuous low rumble, began to rock
from sky to sky. Fitful showers of rain, odorous and heavy, but
unsatisfying, fell, and birds and beasts of the woodlands came slinking
in to our streets and courtyards. Ever since the sky first darkened
our own animals had become strangely familiar, and now here were these
wild things of the woods slinking in for companionship, sagheaded and
frightened. To me especially they came, until that last evening as I
staggered dying about the streets or sat staring into the remorseless
sky from the steps of Heru's prison house, all sorts of beasts drew
softly in and crowded about, whether I sat or moved, all asking for the
hope I had not to give them.

At another time this might have been embarrassing; then it seemed pure
commonplace. It was a sight to see them slink in between the useless
showers, which fell like hot tears upon us--sleek panthers with lolling
tongues; russet-red wood dogs; bears and sloths from the dark arcades
of the remote forests, all casting themselves down gasping in the
palace s