us and our hands succeeded in about an hour in out a patch of ground about ten feet long by twelve wide to the depth of two feet then we cut a quantity of low with our hunting knives and creeping into the hole pulled it over us all by ic with the exception of on whom being a the sun had no particular effect this gave us some slight shelter from the burning rays of the sun but the heat in that amateur grave can be better imagined than described the black hole of must have been a fool to it indeed to this moment i do not know how we lived through the day there we lay panting and every now and again our lips from our scanty supply of water had we followed our inclinations we should have finished off all we had in the first two hours but we had to exercise the most rigid care for if our water failed us we knew that we must quickly perish miserably but everything has an end if only you live long enough to see it and somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening three o clock in the afternoon we determined that we could stand it no longer it would be better to die walking than to be slowly killed by heat and thirst in that dreadful hole so taking each of us a little drink from our fast supply of water now heated to about the same temperature as a man s blood we staggered on we had now covered some fifty miles of desert if my reader will refer to the rough copy and translation of old da s map he will see that the desert is marked as being forty across and the pan bad water is set down as being about in the middle of it now forty is one hundred and twenty miles consequently we ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if any should really exist through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along scarcely doing more than a mile and a half an hour h by ic at we again rested waiting for the moon and after drinking a little managed to get some sleep before we lay down pointed out to as a slight and indistinct on the flat surface of the desert about eight miles away at the distance it looked like an and as i was dropping off to sleep i fell to wondering what it be with the moon we started on again feeling dreadfully exhausted and suffering from thirst and heat nobody who has not felt it can know what we went through we no longer walked we staggered now and again falling from exhaustion and being obliged to call a halt every hour or so we had scarcely energy left in us to speak up to now good had and for he was a merry fellow but now he had not a joke left in him at last about two o clock utterly worn out in body and mind we came to the foot of this queer hill or sand which did at first sight resemble a gigantic ant heap about a hundred feet high and covering at the base nearly a two acres of ground here we halted and driven by our desperate thirst sucked down our last drops of water we had but half a pint a head and we could each have drank a then we lay down just as i was dropping off to sleep x heard remark to himself in k we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises to morrow i shuddered hot as it was the near prospect of such an awful death is not pleasant but even the thought of it could not keep me from sleeping by chapter vl water in two hours time about four o clock i woke up as soon as the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied the thirst from which i was suffering asserted itself i could sleep no more i had been dreaming that i was bathing in a running stream with green banks and trees upon them and i awoke to find myself in that arid wilderness and to remember that as had said if we did not find water that day we must certainly perish miserably no human creature could live long without water in that heat i sat up and rubbed my face with my dry and hands my lips and eyelids were stuck together and it was only after some rubbing and with an effort that i was able to open them it was not far off the dawn but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air which was thick with a hot i cannot describe the others were still sleeping presently it began to grow light enough to read so i drew out a little pocket copy of the legends i had brought with me and read the of when i got to where a nice little boy held a golden and with water as pure as any that flows between and i literally my cracked lips or rather tried to them mere thought of that pure water by king solomon s mines me mad if the cardinal had been there with his bell book and candle i would have whipped in and drank his water up yes even if he had already filled it with the of soap worthy of washing the hands of the pope and i knew that the whole concentrated curse of the catholic church should fall upon me for so doing i almost think i must have been a little light headed with thirst and weariness and want of food for i fell to thinking how astonished the cardinal and his nice little boy and the would 