Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/353

 "There is very little wind this morning," said Joe; "but perhaps it will increase," added he, seeing the scarcely-concealed anxiety of Ferguson.

Vain hope! The air was perfectly still—one of those calms which, in tropical climates, keep ships helpless for days. The heat became intolerable, and the thermometer marked 130° in the shade.

Joe and Kennedy lay side by side, and sought in sleep, or rather torpor, to forget the terrors of their position. This forced inactivity was most distressing. A man is to be pitied who is unable to divert his thoughts by work or occupation; but here there was nothing to watch over or to attempt to do any longer. They were obliged to submit to the situation, without any power to better it.

The sufferings arising from thirst now began to assert themselves cruelly. Brandy, far from allaying, rather increased them, and well does it merit the name of "tiger's milk," which has been bestowed upon it by the natives of Africa. About two pints of warm liquid was all that remained. Each one gloated over these precious drops, but no one dared to wet his lips. Two pints of water in the midst of the desert!

Then Doctor Ferguson began to reflect whether he had been wise in what he had done. Would it not have been better to have preserved the water he had decomposed to no purpose to maintain the balloon in the air? He had no doubt made a little progress, but were they any better for it? When he found he had gained sixty miles in this latitude, what did it matter, since they were in want of water at that place? The wind, if it did get up, would blow lower down as well as up there—even less strongly up there if it came from the east. But hope impelled Samuel forward. And yet those two gallons of water, expended in vain, would have sufficed for a nine-days' halt in the desert. And what changes might not nine days bring forth? Perhaps, however, while preserving this water, had he been able to ascend by throwing out ballast, he must have let the gas escape when he wished to descend. But the gas of the balloon was its very existence, its life-blood!

These thoughts, and a thousand others, passed through the doctor's brain. He sat for hours, his head clasped between his hands, and stirred not.