It says much for the loyalty to the duty of these two airmen that they carefully dismantled the gun which was mounted on the machine before setting fire to the latter, and that they actually set off on their long tramp across the burning desert carrying the gun between them.
It soon became evident that any idea of saving the gun by taking it all the way with them was hopeless. The weight, not inconsiderable under any condition, was insupportable, and before long there was no course possible but to bury the weapon in the sand, obliterating as best they could all tell-tale traces which might reveal its hidden presence to a chance enemy patrol.
II—OVER THE BURNING DESERT WITH A GUN
Progress was easier when the cumbersome weapon had been disposed of. But it was not long before clothing had to be jettisoned also. The relatively thick and heavy garments of an aviator were intolerable under the savage rays of the sun, and one by one they had to be discarded. Even so, the going was terribly difficult and the journey most exacting. By means of a compass a direction due west was maintained, the one hope of the castaways being to keep on until some point on the Canal should be reached.
The hours went slowly by as mile after mile was laboriously covered. The strength of both men was steadily declining, but it was not until something more than half the estimated distance from their goal had been accomplished that either gave way. Then one collapsed; he could go no farther, he declared. His companion, well aware how fatally seductive a "rest" would inevitably be, bade him keep going, but without effect. The weary man's legs gave way beneath him; he sank down on the sand, and declared that he preferred to stay there rather than attempt to struggle on any longer. Advice, persuasion, cajolery, threats, and even force were of no avail, and nothing remained but for the second man to continue the journey, with waning hope, alone. To stay with his comrade meant that both must inevitably perish miserably; by pressing on there was, at all events, a faint chance, not only of reaching the Canal himself, but of summoning aid to return in time to rescue the other.
For some miles the wretched survivor, now tortured by an awful thirst and so weakened that he seemed scarcely able to move his legs, staggered blindly on across the desert. He had consciousness enough to maintain his westerly direction, but as to how long he continued stumbling forward in this almost aimless fashion, or what distance he covered, he can hazard only the wildest guess. His progress became largely automatic. Force of will kept him moving, his reluctant limbs relapsing into semi-mechanical action.
At the moment of his direst extremity, as it seemed, when from sheer lack of power his body threatened to collapse altogether, the hapless wanderer espied a horse before him in the desert!
Now, if this were fiction, no writer, however cynical, would ever dare to introduce a horse at such a point of the narrative. The thing would be too absurd; the long arm of coincidence never reached so far as that! Nobody could be expected to believe it.
Yet the fact is as stated. At the psychological moment, when every new step taken might have proved his last, the wanderer saw before him in the desert the miraculous apparition of a horse. It can be easily supposed that at first he did not believe his eyes. In his half-demented state he feared the creature must be an hallucination—some trick of mirage, or the mere figment of his disordered brain. Only when he came nearer, and could hear as well as see the animal move, did a full realization of his good fortune begin to dawn upon him.