n--nothing else put the strength back into his legs.

Back into the cave he pressed--back into the unknown dark. The flinty
sides were cool. He stopped to press his cheeks against them, then
licked them with his dry tongue. Back--back away from the temptation
to jump, he staggered. Another step, for all he knew, might plunge him
into some dark well; but even so, it wouldn't matter much. There might
be water at the bottom. Now and then he paused to listen, for it
seemed to him he caught the musical tinkling of dripping water. He
pictured a crystal stream such as that in which when a boy he used to
fish for trout, tinkling over the clean rock surface,--a sparkling,
fairy waterfall where at the bottom he might scoop up icy handfuls.

He tried to pierce the dark to where this sound seemed to be. He
struck one of his precious matches. The flame which he held before him
was repeated a thousand times, in a shining pool to the left. With a
throaty, animal-like cry, he threw himself forward and plunged his
hands into the pool. They met a cutting surface of a hundred little
stones. He groped all around; nothing but these little stones. He
grabbed a handful of them and struck another match. This was no pool
of water--this was not a crystal spring--it was nothing but a little
pile of diamonds. In a rage he flung them from him.

Jewels--jewels when he wanted water! Baubles of stone when he
thirsted! Surely the gods here who guarded these vanities must be
laughing. If each of these crystals had only been a drop of that
crystal which gives life and surcease to burning throats,--if only
these bits could resolve themselves into that precious thing which
they mocked with their clearness!

Maddened by the visions these things had summoned, he staggered back
to the opening. At least he must have air--big, cooling draughts of
air. It was the one thing which was left to him. He would bathe in it
and drink it into his hot lungs. He moved on his hands and knees with
his head dropped low between them like a wounded animal. It was almost
as though he had become a child once more--life had become now so
elemental. Of all the things this big world furnished, he wanted now
but that one thing which it furnishes in such abundance. Just
water--nothing else. Water of which there were lakes full and rivers
full; water which thundered by the ton over crags; water which flooded
down over all the earth. And this, the freest of all things, was taken
fro