In Desert and Wilderness

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Stas left him, making no reply. But before the tent he saw Nell's little figure; the shouts and yells had awakened her some time before.

"What has happened, Stas?" she asked, running up to him.

And he placed his hand on her little head and solemnly said:

"Nell, pray to God for water; otherwise we all shall perish."

So the little maiden upraised her pale little face and, fastening her eyes on the moon's silvery shield, began to implore for succor Him who in heaven causes the stars to revolve and on earth tempers the wind for the shorn lamb.

After a sleepless, noisy, and anxious night the sun rolled upon the horizon suddenly, as it always does under the equator, and a bright day followed. On the grass there was not a drop of dew; on the sky not a cloudlet. Stas ordered the guards to assemble the men and delivered a short speech to them. He declared to them that it was impossible to return to the river now, for they of course well knew that they were separated from it by five days' and nights' journey. But on the other hand no one knew whether there was not water in the opposite direction. Perhaps even not far away they would find some stream, some rivulet or slough. Trees, indeed, could not be seen, but it often happens upon open plains where the strong gale carries away the seeds, trees do not grow even at the water-side. Yesterday they saw some big antelopes and a few ostriches running towards the east, which was a sign that yonder there must be some watering place, and in view of this whoever is not a fool and whoever has in his bosom a heart, not of a hare but of a lion or buffalo, will prefer to move forward, though in thirst and pain, rather than to lie down and wait there for vultures or hyenas.

And saying this, he pointed with his hand at the vultures, a few of which coursed already in an ill-omened circle above the caravan. After these words the Wahimas, whom Stas commanded to rise, stood up almost as one man, for, accustomed to the dreadful power of kings, they did not dare to resist. But many of the Samburus, in view of the fact that their king Faru remained at the lake, did not want to rise, and these said among themselves: "Why should we go to meet death when she herself will come to us?" In this manner the caravan proceeded, reduced almost one-half, and it started from the outset in torture. For twenty-four hours the people had not had a drop of water or any other fluid in their mouths. Even in a cooler climate this, at labor, would have been an unendurable suffering; and how much more so in this blazing African furnace in which even those who drink copiously perspire the water so quickly that almost at the same moment they can wipe it off their skin with their hands. It was also to be foreseen that many of the men would drop on the way from exhaustion and sunstroke. Stas protected Nell as best he could from the sun and did not permit her to lean for even a moment out of the palanquin, whose little roof he covered with a piece of white percale in order to make it double. With the rest of the water, which he still had in the rubber bottle, he prepared a strong tea for her and handed it to her when cooled off, without any sugar, for sweets increase thirst. The little girl urged him with tears to drink also; so he placed to his lips the bottle in which there remained scarcely a few thimblefuls of water, and, moving his throat, pretended that he drank it. At the moment when he felt the moisture on his lips it seemed to him that his breast and stomach were aflame and that if he did not quench that flame he would drop dead. Before his eyes red spots began to flit, and in his jaws he felt a terrible pain, as if some one stuck a thousand pins in them. His hands shook so that he almost spilt these last drops. Nevertheless, he caught only two or three in his mouth with his tongue; the rest he saved for Nell.

A day of torture and toil again passed, after which, fortunately, a cooler night came. But the following morning the intense heat became 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, but when Kali carelessly came near him he grunted menacingly and waved his trunk so that he would have killed the boy if he had not jumped aside in time.