III
THE THIRSTY WELL
o they escaped, slitting the swift hours with ungovernable speed. The furrow they two made in the world that day, as they went shooting over the round of it, was called in after times the Equator, and men still know it by the heat of it, though it has since been covered over by the dust of ages.
To Noodle, as he went careering round it, the whole world's circuit ran in a line across his brain, entering his vision and passing through it as a thread through the needle's eye. Nor would he of his own will ever have stopped his galloping, but that at the completion of the first round a mighty thirst took hold of him. 'O my moonbeam,' he said, choking behind parched lips, and sick at heart, 'check me, or I faint!' And the Galloping Plough stopped at once, and set him to earth in a green space under the shadow of overhanging boughs.
He found himself in a richly grown garden, a cool paradise for a traveller to rest in. Close at hand and inviting to the eye was a well with a bucket slung ready to be let down. Noodle had little thought of seeking for the owner of the garden to beg for a drink, since water is an equal gift to all and the right of any man; but as he drew near he found the means to it withheld from him, the lid being fast locked. He went on in search of the owner, till at length he came upon the same lying half asleep under a thorn-bush with the key in her hand. She was an old woman, so withered and dry, she looked as if no water could have ever passed her lips.
When Noodle asked for a drink from the well, she looked at him bright and sharp, and said: 'Before any man drinks of my water he must make a bargain with me.' 'What is the bargain?' asked Noodle; and she led him down to the well.
Then she unlocked the lid and bade him look in; and at the sight Noodle knew for a second time that his heart had been stolen from him, and that to be happy he must taste that water or die.
Again he asked, with his eyes intent upon the blue wrimpling of the water in the well's depth, 'What is the bargain?' And the old woman answered, 'If you fail to draw water out of the well you must fling yourself into it.' For answer Noodle swung down the bucket, lowering it as fast as it would go; then he set both hands to the windlass and wound.