of half stupor--that is,
my mind was in this state, but unfortunately my body was not so. On the
contrary, I was racked with severe bodily pain--the pain of extreme
thirst--perhaps the most grievous and hardest to endure of all physical
suffering. I never should have believed that one could be so tortured
by so simple a thing as the want of a drink of water, and when I used to
read of travellers in the desert, and shipwrecked mariners on the ocean,
having endured such agonies from thirst, as even to die of it, I always
fancied there was exaggeration in the narrative. Like all English boys,
brought up in a climate where there is plenty of moisture, and in a
country where springs or runlets exist within a few hundred yards of any
given point, it is not likely I should ever have known thirst by
experience. Perhaps a little of it at times, when at play off in the
fields, or by the sea-shore, where there was no fresh water. Then I had
felt what we ordinarily call thirst--a somewhat unpleasant sensation in
the throat, which causes us to yearn for a glass of water. But this
unpleasantness is very trifling, and is almost neutralised by the
anticipation we have of the pleasure to be experienced while allaying
it; for this, we know, we shall be able to accomplish in a very short
time. Indeed, so trifling is the annoyance we feel from ordinary
thirst, that it is rare when we are compelled to stoop, either to the
ditch or the pond, for the purpose of assuaging it. We are dainty
enough to wait, until we encounter a cool well or some limpid spring.

This, however, is not thirst; it is but thirst in its first and mildest
stage--rather pleasant from the knowledge you have of being able soon to
remove the pain. Once take away this confidence--become assured that no
wells nor springs are near--no ponds, ditches, lakes, nor rivers--that
no fresh water is within hundreds of miles of you--no fluid of any kind
that will allay the appetite, and then even this incipient feeling of
thirst would at once assume a new character, and become sufficiently
painful to endure.

I may not have been so absolutely in need of drink at the time, for I
had not been so long without it. I am sure I had often gone for days
without thinking of water, but this was just because I knew I might have
as much as I pleased at a moment's notice. Now, that there was none to
be had, and no prospect of obtaining any, I felt for the first time in
my life that thi