Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/437

 Rh not hear from his lips that he had acted like a brave boy and like a true Pole! The end, the end! In a few days the sun would shine only upon the lifeless bodies and afterwards would dry them up into a semblance of those mummies which slumber in an eternal sleep in the museums in Egypt.

From torture and fever his mind began to get confused. Ante-mortem visions and delusions of hearing crowded upon him. He heard distinctly the voices of the Sudânese and Bedouins yelling "Yalla! Yalla!" at the speeding camels. He saw Idris and Gebhr. The Mahdi smiled at him with his thick lips, asking: "Do you want to drink at the spring of truth?"—Afterwards the lion gazed at him from the rock; later Linde gave him a gallipot of quinine and said: "Hurry, hurry, for the little one will die." And in the end he beheld only the pale, very dear little face and two little hands stretched out towards him.

Suddenly he trembled and consciousness returned to him for a moment, for hard by murmured the quiet whisper of Nell, resembling a moan:

"Stas—water!"

And she, like Kali previously, looked to him only for help.

But as twelve hours before he had given her the last drop, he now started up suddenly, and exclaimed in a voice in which vibrated an outburst of pain, despair, and affliction:

"Oh, Nell, I only pretended that I was drinking! For three days I have had nothing in my mouth!"

And clasping his head with both hands he ran away in order not to look at her sufferings. He rushed blindly among tufts of grass and heather until he fell upon one of the tufts. He was unarmed. A leopard, lion, or even a big hyena would find in him an easy prey. But only