me
terrible. There was not a breath of air. The sun, like an evil spirit,
ravaged with living flame the parched earth. The borders of the horizon
whitened. As far as the eyes reached not even euphorbias could be seen.
Nothing--only a burnt, desolate plain, covered with tufts of blackened
grass and heather. From time to time there resounded in the
immeasurable distance light thunder, but this in fair skies proclaims
not storms but a drought.

About noon, when the heat became the greatest, it was necessary to
halt. The caravan broke ranks in gloomy silence. It appeared that one
horse fell and about thirteen of the guards remained on the road.
During the rest nobody thought of eating. The people had sunken eyes
and cracked lips and on them dried clots of blood. Nell panted like a
bird, so Stas surrendered to her the rubber bottle, and exclaiming: "I
drank! I drank!" he ran to the other side of the camp, for he feared
that if he remained he would snatch that water from her or would demand
that she should share it with him. This perhaps was his most heroic act
during the course of the journey. He himself, however, began to suffer
horribly. Before his eyes there flew continually the red patches. He
felt a tightening of his jaws so strongly that he opened and closed
them with difficulty. His throat was dry, burning; there was no saliva
in his mouth; the tongue was as though wooden. And of course this was
but the beginning of the torture for him and for the caravan.

The thunder announcing the drought resounded incessantly on the
horizon's border. About three o'clock, when the sun passed to the
western side of the heavens, Stas ordered the caravan to rise and
started at its head towards the east. But now hardly seventy men
followed him, and every little while some one of them lay down beside
his pack to rise nevermore. The heat decreased a few degrees but was
still terrible. The still air was permeated as though with the gas of
burning charcoal. The people had nothing to breathe and the animals
began to suffer no less. In an hour after the start again one of the
horses fell. Saba panted and his flanks heaved; from his blackened
tongue not a drop of froth fell. The King, accustomed to the dry
African jungle, apparently suffered the least, but he began to be
vicious. His little eyes glittered with a kind of strange light. To
Stas, and particularly to Nell, who from time to time talked to him, he
answered still with a gurgle, bu