Atlantida
Page 139That 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
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."
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
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.