Atlantida

indeed at the indicated spots, but we found nothing in them but a burning yellow mud. It was enough for the camel, enough so that at the end of the fifth day, thanks to prodigious self-control, we had used up only one of our two water skins. Then we believed ourselves safe.

Near one of these muddy puddles, I succeeded that day in shooting down a little straight-horned desert gazelle. Tanit-Zerga skinned the beast and we regaled ourselves with a delicious haunch. Meantime, little Galé, who never ceased prying about the cracks in the rocks during our mid-day halts in the heat, discovered an ourane, a sand crocodile, five feet long, and made short work of breaking his neck. She ate so much she could not budge. It cost us a pint of water to help her digestion. We gave it with good grace, for we were happy. Tanit-Zerga did not say so, but her joy at knowing that I was thinking no more of the woman in the gold diadem and the emeralds was apparent. And really, during those days, I hardly thought of her. I thought only of the torrid heat to be avoided, of the water skins which, if you wished to drink fresh water, had to be left for an hour in a cleft in the rocks; of the intense joy which seized you when you raised to your lips a leather goblet brimming with that life-saving water. . . . I can say this with authority, with good authority, indeed; passion, spiritual or physical, is a thing for those who have eaten and drunk and rested.

p. 285