rage took form as a line of dazzling white houses along a sea of
cobalt and indigo. And to add to the reality of the mirage, some miles
away, he could see two boats with sails all green and blue from the
reflection of the luster of the water.

The man's eyes fell. He studied his feet. They were naked, now, cut
to the bone, caked with blood and sand. Odd, that they did not hurt.
Where were his babooches? He seemed to remember something about having
taken some ragged ones from the feet of some woman or other, a very
long time ago, and having bound his own upon her mangled feet.

"I'll ask the people in those houses, down there," thought he; and on
hands and knees started to crawl down the slope of the dunes toward
the 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 must
not go!_"

He paused. "There was a woman, then!" he gasped. "But--where is she
now?"

Realization that she had disappeared sobered him. He got up, groped
with emaciated hands before his face as he turned back away from the
white houses and stumbled eastward.

All at once he saw something white lying on the sand, under a cooking
glare of sunlight. Memory returned. He fell on his knees beside the
woman and caught her up in quivering arms.

After a while, he noticed there was blood on her left arm. Blood, in
the bend of the elbow, coagulated there.

This puzzled him. All he could think was that she might have cut
herself 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; that
she had thought him dying; that she had tried to cut her arm and give
him her blood to drink; that she had fainted in the effort. Some last
remnants of strength welled up in him. He stooped, got her across his
shoulder, 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--blue
sails, turquoise sea, feathery palms, white houses.

"By God!" he croaked. "Mirages--they don't last, this way! That's
real--that's real water, by the living God!"

Up from dark profundities of tortured memory arose the cry of
Xenophon's bold Greeks when, after their long torment, they had of
a sudden fronted blue water. At sight of the little British consular
station of Batn el Hayil, on the Gulf of Farsan:

"_Thalassa!_