Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/264



and hotter grew that stifling spell, more and more languid man and beast, drier and drier the parching earth.

All the water gave out on the morning after I had bearded Ar-hap in his den, and our strength went with it. No earthly heat was ever like it, and it drank our vitality up from every pore. Water there was down below in the bitter, streaming gulf, but so noisome that we dared not even bathe there; here there was none but the faintest trickle. All discipline was at an end; all desire save such as was born of thirst. Heru I saw as often as I wished as she lay gasping, with poor Si at her feet, in the women's verandah; but the heat was so tremendous that I gazed at her with lack-lustre eyes, staggering to and fro amongst the courtyard shadows, without nerve to plot her rescue or strength to carry out anything my mind might have conceived.

We prayed for rain and respite. Ar-hap had prayed with a wealth of picturesque ceremonial.