Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/432

 424 will prefer to move forward, though in thirst and pain, rather than to lie down and wait there for vultures or hyenas.

And saying this, he pointed with his hand at the vultures, a few of which coursed already in an ill-omened circle above the caravan. After these words the Wahimas, whom Stas commanded to rise, stood up almost as one man, for, accustomed to the dreadful power of kings, they did not dare to resist. But many of the Samburus, in view of the fact that their king Faru remained at the lake, did not want to rise, and these said among themselves: "Why should we go to meet death when she herself will come to us?" In this manner the caravan proceeded, reduced almost one-half, and it started from the outset in torture. For twenty-four hours the people had not had a drop of water or any other fluid in their mouths. Even in a cooler climate this, at labor, would have been an unendurable suffering; and how much more so in this blazing African furnace in which even those who drink copiously perspire the water so quickly that almost at the same moment they can wipe it off their skin with their hands. It was also to be foreseen that many of the men would drop on the way from exhaustion and sunstroke. Stas protected Nell as best he could from the sun and did not permit her to lean for even a moment out of the palanquin, whose little roof he covered with a piece of white percale in order to make it double. With the rest of the water, which he still had in the rubber bottle, he prepared a strong tea for her and handed it to her when cooled off, without any sugar, for sweets increase thirst. The little girl urged him with tears to drink also; so he placed to his lips the bottle in which there remained scarcely a few thimblefuls of water, and, moving his throat, pretended that he drank it. At the moment