Hotter 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 court-yard 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. We had all prayed and cursed by turns, but still the heavens would not relent, and the rain came not.
At last the stifling heat and vapour reached an almost intolerable pitch. The earth reeked with unwholesome hum-ours no common summer could draw from it, the air was sulphurous and heavy, while overhead the sky seemed a tawny dome, from edge to edge of angry clouds, parting now and then to let us see the red disc threatening us.
Hour after hour slipped by until, when evening was upon us, the clouds drew together, and thunder, with a continu-ous low rumble, began to rock from sky to sky. Fitful showers of rain, odorous and heavy, but unsatisfying, fell, and birds and beasts of the woodlands came slinking in to our streets and courtyards. Ever since the sky first darkened our own animals had become strangely familiar, and now here were these wild things of the woods slinking in for companion-ship, sagheaded and frightened. To me especially they came, until that last evening as I staggered dying about the streets or sat staring into the remorseless sky from the steps of Heru's prison house, all sorts of beasts drew softly in and crowded about, whether I sat or moved, all asking for the hope I had not to give them.
At another time this might have been embarrassing; then it seemed pure commonplace. It was a sight to see them slink in between the useless showers, which fell like hot tears upon us--sleek panthers with lolling tongues; russet-red wood dogs; bears and sloths from the dark arcades of the remote forests, all casting themselves down gasping in the palace shadows; strange deer, who staggered to the garden plots and lay there heaving their lives out; mighty boars, who came from the river marshes and silently nozzled a place amongst their enemies to die in! Even the wolves came off the hills, and, with bloodshot eyes and tongues that dripped foam, flung themselves down in my shadow.
All along the tall stockades apes sat sad and listless, and on the roof-ridges storks were dying. Over the branches of the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had a six months' drought, the toucans and Martian parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores along under the walls.
Our common sorrow made us as sociable as though Iwere Noah, and Ar-hap's palace mound another Ararat.
Hour after hour I sat amongst all these lesser beasts in the hot darkness, waiting for the end. Every now and then the heavy clouds parted, changing the gloom to sudden fiery daylight as the great red eye in the west looked upon us through the crevice, and, taking advantage of those gleams, I would reel across to where, under a spout leading from a dried rivulet, I had placed a cup to collect the slow and tepid drops that were all now coming down the reed for Heru. And as I went back each time with that sickly spoonful at the bottom of the vessel all the dying beasts lifted their heads and watched--the thirsty wolves shamb-ling after me; the boars half sat up and grunted plaintively;the panthers, too weak to rise, beat the dusty ground with their tails; and from the portico the blue storks, with trailing wings, croaked husky greeting.
But slower and slower came the dripping water, more and more intolerable the heat. At last I could stand it no longer. What purpose did it serve to lay gasping like this, dying cruelly without a hope of rescue, when a shorter way was at my side? I had not drank for a day and a half. I was past active reviling; my head swam; my reason was clouded.
No! I would not stand it any longer. Once more I would take Heru and poor Si the cup that was but a mockery after all, then fix my sword into the ground and try what next the Fates had in store for me.
So once again the leathern mug was fetched and carried through the prostrate guards to where the Martian girl lay, like a withered flower, upon her couch. Once again Imoistened those fair lips, while my own tongue was black and swollen in my throat, then told Si, who had had none all the afternoon, to drink half and leave half for Heru. Poor Si put her aching lips to the cup and tilted it a little, then passed it to her mistress. And Heru drank it all, and Si cried a few hot tears behind her hands, FOR SHE HAD TAKEN NONE, and she knew it was her life!
Again picking a way through the courtyard, scarce notic-ing how the beasts lifted their heads as I passed, I went instinctively, cup in hand, to the well, and then hesitated.
Was I a coward to leave Heru so? Ought I not to stay and see it out to the bitter end? Well, I would compound with Fate. I would give the malicious gods one more chance.
I would put the cup down again, and until seven drops had fallen into it I would wait. That there might be no mistake about it, no sooner was the mug in place under the nozzle wherefrom the moisture beads collected and fell with infinite slowness, than my sword, on which I meant to throw my-self, was bared and the hilt forced into a gaping crack in the ground, and sullenly contented to leave my fate so, Isat down beside it.
