she was already
tired. "All roads lead to rest."

How am I to describe the misery of the next four days? How am I to tell
how we stumbled on through that awful desert, almost without food, and
quite without water, for there were no streams, and we saw no springs?
We soon found how the case was, and saved almost all the water in our
bottles for the child. To look back on it is like a nightmare. I can
scarcely bear to dwell on it. Day after day, by turns carrying the
child through the heavy sand; night after night lying down in the scrub,
chewing the leaves, and licking such dew as there was from the scanty
grass! Not a spring, not a pool, not a head of game! It was the third
night; we were nearly mad with thirst. Tota was in a comatose condition.
Indaba-zimbi still had a little water in his bottle--perhaps a
wine-glassful. With it we moistened our lips and blackened tongues. Then
we gave the rest to the child. It revived her. She awoke from her swoon
to sink into sleep.

See, the dawn was breaking. The hills were not more than eight miles or
so away now, and they were green. There must be water there.

"Come," I said.

Indaba-zimbi lifted Tota into the kind of sling that we had made out of
the blanket in which to carry her on our backs, and we staggered on for
an hour through the sand. She awoke crying for water, and alas! we
had none to give her; our tongues were hanging from our lips, we could
scarcely speak.

We rested awhile, and Tota mercifully swooned away again. Then
Indaba-zimbi took her. Though he was so thin the old man's strength was
wonderful.

Another hour; the slope of the great peak could not be more than two
miles away now. A couple of hundred yards off grew a large baobab
tree. Could we reach its shade? We had done half the distance when
Indaba-zimbi fell from exhaustion. We were now so weak that neither of
us could lift the child on to our backs. He rose again, and we each
took one of her hands and dragged her along the road. Fifty yards--they
seemed to be fifty miles. Ah, the tree was reached at last; compared
with the heat outside, the shade of its dense foliage seemed like the
dusk and cool of a vault. I remember thinking that it was a good place
to die in. Then I remember no more.

I woke with a feeling as though the blessed rain were falling on my face
and head. Slowly, and with great difficulty, I opened my eyes, then shut
them again, having seen a vision. For a space I lay thus, whil