That is what people feel and say even when they know that in a few
hours they will have a good rest with food and water.
I was suffering terribly. Every step jolted my poor shoulder. At one
time, I wanted to stop, to sit down. Then I looked at Tanit-Zerga. She
was walking ahead with her eyes almost closed. Her expression was an
indefinable one of mingled suffering and determination. I closed my
own eyes and went on.
Such was the first stage. At dawn we stopped in a hollow in the rocks.
Soon the heat forced us to rise to seek a deeper one. Tanit-Zerga did
not eat. Instead, she swallowed a little of her half can of water. She
lay drowsy all day. Galé ran about our rock giving plaintive little
cries.
I am not going to tell you about the second march. It was more
horrible than anything you can imagine. I suffered all that it is
humanly possible to suffer in the desert. But already I began to
observe with infinite pity that my man's strength was outlasting the
nervous force of my little companion. The poor child walked on without
saying a word, chewing feebly one corner of her haik which she had
drawn over her face. Galé followed.
The well toward which we were dragging ourselves was indicated on
Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh's paper by the one word Tissaririn. Tissaririn is
the plural of Tissarirt and means "two isolated trees."
Day was dawning when finally I saw the two trees, two gum trees.
Hardly a league separated us from them. I gave a cry of joy.
"Courage, Tanit-Zerga, there is the well."
She drew her veil aside and I saw the poor anguished little face.
"So much the better," she murmured, "because otherwise...."
She could not even finish the sentence.
We finished the last half mile almost at a run. We already saw the
hole, the opening of the well.
Finally we reached it.
It was empty.
It is a strange sensation to be dying of thirst. At first the
suffering is terrible. Then, gradually, it becomes less. You become
partly unconscious. Ridiculous little things about your life occur to
you, fly about you like mosquitoes. I began to remember my history
composition for the entrance examination of Saint-Cyr, "The Campaign
of Marengo." Obstinately I repeated to myself, "I have already said
that the battery unmasked by Marmont at the moment of Kellerman's
charge included eighteen pieces.... No, I remember now, it was only
twelve pieces. I am sure it was twelve pieces."
I kept on repeating: "Twelve pieces."
Then I fell into a sort of coma.