The Bondman: A New Saga

by Sir Hall Caine

"Hot! It is hot," cried Jason. "And the land is accursed."

At that word, Sunlocks uttered a low groan, and his head, which had been partly lifted, fell heavily backwards, and his hair hung over Jason's shoulder. He was again unconscious.

Then more than ever like a wild beast ranging the hills with its prey, Jason strode along. And presently he saw a lake of blue water far away. He knew it for cold water, blessed, ice-cold water, water to bathe the hot forehead with, water to drink. With a cry of joy, which there was no human ear to hear, he turned and made towards it; but just as he did so, softening as he went, and muttering from his own parched throat words of hope and comfort to the unconscious man he carried, a gunshot echoed through the mountains above his head.

He knew what the shot was; it was the signal of his escape. And looking down to the valley, he saw that the guards of the settlement were gathering on their ponies in the very line of the plain that he must traverse to reach the water for which Sunlocks thirsted.

Then "Water, water," came again in the same faint voice as before, and whether with his actual ear he heard that cry, or in the torment of his distraught sense it only rang out in his empty heart, no man shall say. But all the same he answered it from his choking throat, "Patience, patience."

And then, with another look downward, the look of a human stag, at the cool water which he might not reach and live, he turned himself back to the mountains.

What happened to him then, and for many weary hours thereafter, it would weary the spirit to tell: what plains he crossed, what hills he climbed, and in what desolate wilderness he walked alone, with no one for company save the unconscious man across his shoulder, and no eye to look upon him save the eye of God.

And first he crossed a wide sea of lava dust, black as the ravens that flew in the air above it, and bounded by hills as dark as the earth that were themselves vast sand drifts blown up into strange and terrible shapes by mighty tempests. Then he came upon a plain strewn over with cinders, having a grim crag frowning upon it, like the bank of a smelting-house, with its screes of refuse rolling down. By this time the sun had risen high and grown hot, and the black ground under his feet began to send up the reflection of the sun's rays into his face to scorch it.

And still the cry of "water, water," rang in his ears, and his eyes ranged the desolate land to find it, but never a sign of it could he see, and his strong heart sank. Once, when he had mounted with great toil to the top of a hill, where all behind him had been black and burnt and blistered, he saw a wide valley stretching in front of him that was as green as the grass of spring. And he thought that where there was grass there would surely be water, streams of water, rivers of water, pools of water, sunny stretches of sweet water lying clear and quiet over amber pebbles and between soft brown banks of turf.

So at this sight his heart was lifted up, and bounding down the hillside, over the lava blocks, as fast as he could go for his burden, he began to sing from his cracked throat in his hoarse and quavery voice. But when he reached the valley his song stopped, and his heart sank afresh, for it was not grass, but moss that grew there, and it lay only on big blocks of lava, with never a drop of moisture or a handful of earth between them.