Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/299

288 So far as thought could come to him, his thought was still to save her.

And he hung there, bound by the waist, with the blaze of the sun in his blind eyes and on his throbbing brain, and the clouds of the booming circling gossamer wings growing darker and larger as his tormentors swarmed down to fasten upon him. One of the soldiers, whom he had heavily bruised in the struggle for his capture, came out of the shade and dipped a wooden cup in the brook, and held it just beyond the reach of his lips.

"Speak, and you shall have drink!"

His throat was baked like burnt clay, his mouth was full of dust, his tongue was cloven to his teeth; he longed for water with the death-thirst of the desert.

The Italian reached and touched his beard with the rim of the cup, so that the coolness of the draught mocked him cióse.

"Will you speak?" He faintly moved his head in denial.

The soldier laughed with taunting mirth, and shook the water from the bowl out on to the herbage at his feet: he knew that every wasted drop would be an added pang.