X
BY WATER
The night before young Larsen left to take up his new appointment inEgypt he went to the clairvoyante. He neither believed nor disbelieved.He felt no interest, for he already knew his past and did not wishto know his future. "Just to please me, Jim," the girl pleaded. "Thewoman is wonderful. Before I had been five minutes with her she toldme your initials, so there _must_ be something in it." "She read yourthought," he smiled indulgently. "Even I can do that!" But the girl wasin earnest. He yielded; and that night at his farewell dinner he cameto give his report of the interview.
The result was meagre and unconvincing: money was coming to him, he wassoon to make a voyage, and--he would never marry. "So you see how sillyit all is," he laughed, for they were to be married when his firstpromotion came. He gave the details, however, making a little story ofit in the way he knew she loved.
"But was that all, Jim?" The girl asked it, looking rather hard intohis face. "Aren't you hiding something from me?" He hesitated a moment,then burst out laughing at her clever discernment. "There _was_ alittle more," he confessed, "but you take it all so seriously; I----"
He had to tell it then, of course. The woman had told him a lot ofgibberish about friendly and unfriendly elements. "She said water wasunfriendly to me; I was to be careful of water, or else I should cometo harm by it. _Fresh_ water only," he hastened to add, seeing that theidea of shipwreck was in her mind.
"Drowning?" the girl asked quickly.
"Yes," he admitted with reluctance, but still laughing; "she did saydrowning, though drowning in no ordinary way."
The girl's face showed uneasiness a moment. "What does thatmean--drowning in no ordinary way?" she asked, a catch in her breath.
But that he could not tell her, because he did not know himself. Hegave, therefore, the exact words: "You will drown, but will not knowyou drown."
It was unwise of him. He wished afterwards he had invented a happierreport, or had kept this detail back. "I'm safe in Egypt, anyhow," helaughed. "I shall be a clever man if I can find enough water in thedesert to do me harm!" And all the way from Trieste to Alexandria heremembered the promise she had extracted--that he would never once goon the Nile unless duty made it imperative for him to do so. He keptthat promise like the literal, faithful soul he was. His love was equalto the somewhat quixotic sacrifice it occasionally involved. Freshwater in Egypt there was practically none other, and in any case thenatrum works where his duty lay had their headquarters some distanceout into the desert. The river, with its banks of welcome, refreshingverdure, was not even visible.
Months passed quickly, and the time for leave came within measurabledistance. In the long interval luck had played the cards kindly forhim, vacancies had occurred, early promotion seemed likely, and hisletters were full of plans to bring her out to share a little house oftheir own. His health, however, had not improved; the dryness did notsuit him; even in this short period his blood had thinned, his nervoussystem deteriorated, and, contrary to the doctor's prophecy, thewaterless air had told upon his sleep. A damp climate liked him best,and once the sun had touched him with its fiery finger.
His letters made no mention of this. He described the life to her,the work, the sport, the pleasant people, and his chances of increasedpay and early marriage. And a week before he sailed he rode out upona final act of duty to inspect the latest diggings his company weremaking. His course lay some twenty miles into the desert behindEl-Chobak and towards the limestone hills of Guebel Haidi, and he wentalone, carrying lunch and tea, for it was the weekly holiday of Friday,and the men were not at work.
The accident was ordinary enough. On his way back in the heat of earlyafternoon his pony stumbled against a boulder on the treacherous desertfilm, threw him heavily, broke the girth, bolted before he could seizethe reins again, and left him stranded some ten or twelve miles fromhome. There was a pain in his knee that made walking difficult, abuzzing in his head that troubled sight and made the landscape swim,while, worse than either, his provisions, fastened to the saddle, hadvanished with the frightened pony into those blazing leagues of sand.He was alone in the Desert, beneath the pitiless afternoon sun, twelvemiles of utterly exhausting country between him and safety.
Under normal conditions he could have covered the distance in fourhours, reaching home by dark; but his knee pained him so that a milean hour proved the best he could possibly do. He reflected a fewminutes. The wisest course was to sit down and wait till the ponytold its obvious story to the stable, and help should come. And thiswas what he did, for the scorching heat and glare were dangerous;they were terrible; he was shaken and bewildered by his fall, hungryand weak into the bargain; and an hour's painful scrambling over thebaked and burning little gorges must have speedily caused completeprostration. He sat down and rubbed his aching knee. It was quite alittle adventure. Yet, though he knew the Desert might not be lightlytrifled with, he felt at the moment nothing more than this--and theamusing description of it he would give in his letter, or--intoxicatingthought--by word of mouth. In the heat of the sun he began to feeldrowsy. A soft torpor crept over him. He dozed. He fell asleep.
It was a long, a dreamless sleep ... for when he woke at length thesun had just gone down, the dusk lay awfully upon the enormous desert,and the air was chilly. The cold had waked him. Quickly, as though onpurpose, the red glow faded from the sky; the first stars shone; itwas dark; the heavens were deep violet. He looked round and realisedthat his sense of direction had gone entirely. Great hunger was inhim. The cold already was bitter as the wind rose, but the pain inhis knee having eased, he got up and walked a little--and in a momentlost sight of the spot where he had been lying. The shadowy desertswallowed it. "Ah," he realised, "this is not an English field ormoor. I'm in the Desert!" The safe thing to do was to remain exactlywhere he was; only thus could the rescuers find him; once he wanderedhe was done for. It was strange the search-party had not yet arrived.To keep warm, however, he was compelled to move, so he made a littlepile of stones to mark the place, and walked round and round it in acircle of some dozen yards' diameter. He limped badly, and the hungergnawed dreadfully; but, after all, the adventure was not so terrible.The amusing side of it kept uppermost still. Though fragile in body,his spirit was not unduly timid or imaginative; he _could_ last outthe night, or, if the worst came to the worst, the next day as well.But when he watched the little group of stones, he saw that there weredozens of them, scores, hundreds, thousands of these little groups ofstones. The desert's face, of course, is thickly strewn with them. Theoriginal one was lost in the first five minutes. So he sat down again.But the biting cold, and the wind that licked his very skin beneath thelight clothing, soon forced him up again. It was ominous; and the nighthuge and shelterless. The shaft of green zodiacal light that hung sostrangely in the western sky for hours had faded away; the stars wereout in their bright thousands; no guide was anywhere; the wind moanedand puffed among the sandy mounds; the vast sheet of desert stretchedappallingly upon the world; he heard the jackals cry....
And with the jackals' cry came suddenly the unwelcome realisation thatno play was in this adventure any more, but that a bleak reality staredat him through the surrounding darkness. He faced it--at bay. He wasgenuinely lost. Thought blocked in him. "I must be calm and think," hesaid aloud. His voice woke no echo; it was small and dead; somethinggigantic ate it instantly. He got up and walked again. Why did noone come? Hours had passed. The pony had long ago found its stable,or--had it run madly in another direction altogether? He worked outpossibilities, tightening his belt. The cold was searching; he neverhad been, never could be warm again; the hot sunshine of a few hoursago seemed the merest dream. Unfamiliar with hardship, he knew notwhat to do, but he took his coat and shirt off, vigorously rubbed hisskin where the dried perspiration of the afternoon still caused clammyshivers, swung his arms furiously like a London cabman, and quicklydressed again. Though the wind upon his bare back was fearful, he feltwarmer a little. He lay down exhausted, sheltered by a
n overhanginglimestone crag, and took snatches of fitful dog's-sleep, while the winddrove overhead and the dry sand pricked his skin. One face continuallywas near him; one pair of tender eyes; two dear hands smoothed him;he smelt the perfume of light brown hair. It was all natural enough.His whole thought, in his misery, ran to her in England--Englandwhere there were soft fresh grass, big sheltering trees, hemlock andhoneysuckle in the hedges--while the hard black Desert guarded him,and consciousness dipped away at little intervals under this dry andpitiless Egyptian sky....
It was perhaps five in the morning when a voice spoke and he startedup with a horrid jerk--the voice of that clairvoyante woman. Thesentence died away into the darkness, but one word remained: _Water!_At first he wondered, but at once explanation came. Cause and effectwere obvious. The clue was physical. His body needed water, and so thethought came up into his mind. He was thirsty.
This was the moment when fear first really touched him. Hunger wasmanageable, more or less--for a day or two, certainly. But thirst!Thirst and the Desert were an evil pair that, by cumulative suggestiongathering since childhood days, brought terror in. Once in the mindit could not be dislodged. In spite of his best efforts, the ghastlything grew passionately--because his thirst grew too. He had smokedmuch; had eaten spiced things at lunch; had breathed in alkali withthe dry, scorched air. He searched for a cool flint pebble to put intohis burning mouth, but found only angular scraps of dusty limestone.There were no pebbles here. The cold helped a little to counteract, butalready he knew in himself subconsciously the dread of something thatwas coming. What was it? He tried to hide the thought and bury it outof sight. The utter futility of his tiny strength against the power ofthe universe appalled him. And then he knew. The merciless sun was onthe way, already rising. Its return was like the presage of executionto him....
It came. With true horror he watched the marvellous swift dawn breakover the sandy sea. The eastern sky glowed hurriedly as from crimsonfires. Ridges, not noticeable in the starlight, turned black in endlessseries, like flat-topped billows of a frozen ocean. Wide streaks ofblue and yellow followed, as the sky dropped sheets of faint lightupon the wind-eaten cliffs and showed their under sides. They did notadvance; they waited till the sun was up--and then they moved; theyrose and sank; they shifted as the sunshine lifted them and the shadowscrept away. But in an hour there would be no shadows any more. Therewould be no shade!...
The little groups of stones began to dance. It was horrible. Theunbroken, huge expanse lay round him, warming up, twelve hours ofblazing hell to come. Already the monstrous Desert glared, each bitfamiliar, since each bit was a repetition of the bit before, behind, oneither side. It laughed at guidance and direction. He rose and walked;for miles he walked, though how many, north, south, or west, he knewnot. The frantic thing was in him now, the fury of the Desert; he tookits pace, its endless, tireless stride, the stride of the burning,murderous Desert that is--waterless. He felt it alive--a blindly heavingdesire in it to reduce him to its conditionless, awful dryness. Hefelt--yet knowing this was feverish and _not_ to be believed--thathis own small life lay on its mighty surface, a mere dot in space, amere heap of little stones. His emotions, his fears, his hopes, hisambition, his love--mere bundled group of little unimportant stonesthat danced with apparent activity for a moment, then were merged inthe undifferentiated surface underneath. He was included in a purposegreater than his own.
The will made a plucky effort then. "A night and a day," he laughed,while his lips cracked smartingly with the stretching of the skin,"what is it? Many a chap has lasted days and days...!" Yes, onlyhe was not of that rare company. He was ordinary, unaccustomedto privation, weak, untrained of spirit, unacquainted with sternresistance. He knew not how to spare himself. The Desert struck himwhere it pleased--all over. It played with him. His tongue was swollen;the parched throat could not swallow. He sank.... An hour he laythere, just wit enough in him to choose the top of a mound where hecould be most easily seen. He lay two hours, three, four hours....The heat blazed down upon him like a furnace.... The sky, when heopened his eyes once, was empty ... then a speck became visible in theblue expanse; and presently another speck. They came from nowhere.They hovered very high, almost out of sight. They appeared, theydisappeared, they--reappeared. Nearer and nearer they swung down, insweeping stealthy circles ... little dancing groups of them, miles awaybut ever drawing closer--the vultures....
He had strained his ears so long for sounds of feet and voices thatit seemed he could no longer hear at all. Hearing had ceased withinhim. Then came the water-dreams, with their agonising torture. Heheard _that_ ... heard it running in silvery streams and rivuletsacross green English meadows. It rippled with silvery music. He heardit splash. He dipped hands and feet and head in it--in deep, clearpools of generous depth. He drank; with his skin he drank, not withmouth and throat alone. Ice clinked in effervescent, sparkling wateragainst a glass. He swam and plunged. Water gushed freely over back andshoulders, gallons and gallons of it, bathfuls and to spare, a flood ofgushing, crystal, cool, life-giving liquid.... And then he stood in abeech wood and felt the streaming deluge of delicious summer rain uponhis face; heard it drip luxuriantly upon a million thirsty leaves. Thewet trunks shone, the damp moss spread its perfume, ferns waved heavilyin the moist atmosphere. He was soaked to the skin in it. A mountaintorrent, fresh from fields of snow, foamed boiling past, and the sprayfell in a shower upon his cheeks and hair. He dived--head foremost....Ah, he was up to the neck ... and _she_ was with him; they were underwater together; he saw her eyes gleaming into his own beneath thecopious flood.
The voice, however, was not hers.... "You will drown, yet youwill not know you drown...!" His swollen tongue called out a name.But no sound was audible. He closed his eyes. There came sweetunconsciousness....
A sound in that instant _was_ audible, though. It was avoice--voices--and the thud of animal hoofs upon the sand. The speckshad vanished from the sky as mysteriously as they came. And, as thoughin answer to the sound, he made a movement--an automatic, unconsciousmovement. He did not know he moved. And the body, uncontrolled, lostits precarious balance. He rolled; but he did not know he rolled.Slowly, over the edge of the sloping mound of sand, he turned sideways.Like a log of wood he slid gradually, turning over and over, nothingto stop him--to the bottom. A few feet only, and not even steep; juststeep enough to keep rolling slowly. There was a--splash. But he didnot know there was a splash.
They found him in a pool of water--one of these rare pools the DesertBedouin mark preciously for their own. He had lain within three yardsof it for hours. He was drowned ... but he did not know he drowned....