When the father and son grew calmer, they began to discuss their situation. Ahmed knew of a small unfrequented oasis, about twenty miles away. It was their only chance of safety, but could they reach it?
"I think I can walk," declared Mustapha, tying up his wounded leg in a fold torn from his turban. But he limped sadly, and his tightly pressed lips showed pain as he moved. He was faint with hunger beside. Neither of the men had eaten since sunrise.
Suddenly Mustapha uttered a joyful cry, and lifted something from the earth.
"The Prophet be praised!" he cried. "My father, here is food. The robbers have dropped a bag of dates."
Sure enough, there it lay, a heavy bag of dates, shaken off from some camel's pack during the struggle. Heavy as it was, and hard to carry, Ahmed would fain have had it larger. It was their safety from starvation. A handful of its contents satisfied hunger, and gave them strength to begin their walk. What a walk it was! Poor Mustapha lay down every half-hour from pain and weakness; the sand was heavy, the darkness puzzled them. When morning broke, they had not accomplished more than half the distance. All through the hot day-time they lay panting on the ground, eating now and then a date, tormented with thirst and heat; and when evening came, they dragged themselves to their feet again, and recommenced their painful journey. Step by step, hour by hour, each harder and longer than the last, moment by moment they grew more feeble, less able to bear up, till it seemed as though they could no longer struggle on. At last, the morning broke. Ahmed raised his blood-shot eyes, seized Mustapha's arm, and pointed. There, not a hundred yards away, was the oasis, its trees and bushes outlined against the sky.
Poor Mustapha was so spent that his father had to drag him across the short dividing space. It was a small oasis, and not very fertile; its well was shallow and scanty, but no ice-cooled sherbet ever seemed more delicious than did its brackish waters to the parched tongues of the exhausted men.
All day and all night they lay under the shadow of the cactuses and the acacia-trees, rousing only to drink, and falling asleep again immediately. Shade, and sleep, and water seemed the only things in the world worth having just then.
The second day they slept less, but it was nearly a week before they could be said to be wide-awake again. Such a pair of scare-crows as they looked! Ahmed was almost naked. The robbers had taken part of his clothes, and the desert thorns the rest. Haggard, wild, blackened by the sun, they gazed at each other with horror; each thought, "Do I look like that?" and each tried to hide from the other his own dismay.
They could never tell afterward how long they remained at the oasis. It seemed years, but I suppose it could not have been more than weeks. All day long they looked wistfully toward the horizon, in hopes of a caravan, but the caravan never came. Slowly the dates dwindled in the bag; slowly the precious water diminished in the well; a little longer, and starvation would be upon them. They scarcely spoke to each other those last days, but sat each by himself in a sort of dull despair. At night, when they fell asleep, they dreamed of food, and woke in the morning to feel themselves still hungry. It was horrible!
Then came a morning when they rose to find the hard desert outline, which they knew so well, vanished and gone, and in its stead a smooth, shining lake, fringed with trees and dotted with feathery, fairy islands. So near it seemed, and so real, that it was as though they heard the ripple of the water and the rustling of the wind in the tree-boughs. Mustapha stared as though his eyes would burst from his head; then he gave a wild cry, and was rushing away; but his father held him fast.