Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/271

 pleasure, gasping and drinking again, feeling my body filling out like the thirsty steaming earth below me. Then, as I still drank insatiably, there came a gleam of lightning out of the gloom overhead, a brilliant yellow blaze, and by it I saw a few yards away a panther drinking at the same pool as myself, his gleaming eyes low down like mine upon the water, and by his side two apes, the black water running in at their gaping mouths, while out beyond were more pools, more drinking animals. Everything was drinking. I saw their outlined forms, the gleam shining on wet skins as though they were cut out in silver against the darkness, each beast steaming like a volcano as the Heaven-sent rain smoked from his fevered hide, all drinking for their lives, heedless of aught else—and then came the thunder.

It ran across the cloudy vault as though the very sky were being ripped apart, rolling in mighty echoes here and there before it died away. As it stopped, the rain also fell less heavily for a minute, and as I lay with my face low down I heard the low, contented lapping of numberless tongues unceasing, insatiable. Then came the lightning again, lighting up everything as though it were daytime. The twin black apes were still drinking, but the panther across the puddle had had enough; I saw him lift his grateful head up to the flare; saw the limp red