"Anything would be delicious with bread yust now," observed the Lieutenant.
At the end of the sandy beach a steep, rocky hill uprose. By the time the three comrades reached the top of this, the sun was pouring down his fiercest rays upon them, and the echini were tormenting their vitals with an avenging thirst. At their right soared the majestic and inaccessible mountains of Crete, at the left and far below stretched the winsome sea, strewn with islands and flecked with flitting sails. They walked for half an hour over volcanic rock, through spiteful, thorny shrubs that clutched at their ankles and tore their clothing, and came at last to the brink of a ravine whose walls were as perpendicular as though they had been cut with a giant saw. In the bed, far below, a mountain torrent dashed eagerly to sea, making sheer leaps over smoothly worn rocks or swirling about in hollow basins.
The three looked down on it and their thirst grew.
"I could drink it all," said Curtis.
A swallow drifted by on slanting wings, darted to the brim of the water-fall and leaped again skyward.
"How is a bird superior to a man!" exclaimed Michali.
"The wings of a man are his mind," replied the Swede. "The hedgehogs are on fire inside of me. We must reach that water to quench them. It would take the whole stream to put out the ones that I ate."
After another hour they came upon a goat trail that, leading from above, ended abruptly and zigzagged from ledge to ledge down the side of the cliff into the stream. Michali's delight was unbounded.
"Follow this trail," he cried, "and we shall a shepherd find with water, or may be a village, who knows?"
"How far is it?" asked Lindbohm.