Chapter 18

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 courtyard 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 humours 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 continuous 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 companionship, 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 I were 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 shambling 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 I moistened 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 noticing 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 myself, was bared and the hilt forced into a gaping crack in the ground, and sullenly contented to leave my fate so, I sat down beside it.

I turned grimly to the spout and saw the first drop fall, then another, and another later on, but still no help came. There was a long rift in the clouds now, and a glare like that from an open furnace door was upon me. I had noticed when I came to the spring how the comet which was killing us hung poised exactly upon the point of a distant hill. If he had passed his horrible meridian, if he was going from us, if he sunk but a hair’s breadth before that seventh drop should fall, I could tell it would mean salvation.

But the fourth drop fell, and he was big as ever. The fifth drop fell, and a hot, pleasing nose was thrust into my hand, and looking down I saw a grey wolf had dragged herself across the court and was asking with eloquent eyes for the help I could not give. The sixth drop gathered, and fell; already the seventh was like a seedling pearl in its place. The dying wolf yanked affectionately at my hand, but I put her by and undid my tunic. Big and bright that drop hung to the spout lip; another minute and it would fall. A beautiful drop, I laughed, peering closely at it, many-coloured, prismatic, flushing red and pink, a tiny living ruby, hanging by a touch to the green rim above; enough! enough! The quiver of an eyelash would unhinge it now; and angry with the life I already felt was behind me, and turning in defiant expectation to the new to come, I rose, saw the red gleam of my sword jutting like a fiery spear from the cracking soil where I had planted it, then looked once more at the drop and glanced for the last time at the sullen red terror on the hill.

Were my eyes dazed, my senses reeling? I said a space ago that the meteor stood exactly on the mountain-top and if it sunk a hair’s breadth I should note it; and now, why, there WAS a flaw in its lower margin, a flattening of the great red foot that before had been round and perfect. I turned my smarting eyes away a minute, --saw the seventh drop fall with a melodious tingle into the cup, then back again, --there was no mistake--the truant fire was a fraction less, it had shrunk a fraction behind the hill even since I looked, and thereon all my life ran back into its channels, the world danced before me, and “Heru!” I shouted hoarsely, reeling back towards the palace, “Heru, ‘tis well; the worst is past!”

But the little princess was unconscious, and at her feet was poor Si, quite dead, still reclining with her head in her hands just as I had left her. Then my own senses gave out, and dropping down by them I remembered no more.

I must have lain there an hour or two, for when consciousness came again it was night--black, cool, profound night, with an inky sky low down upon the tree-tops, and out of it such a glorious deluge of rain descending swiftly and silently as filled my veins even to listen to. Eagerly I shuffled away to the porch steps, down them into the swimming courtyard, and ankle-deep in the glorious flood, set to work lapping furiously at the first puddle, drinking with gasps of pleasure, gasping and drinking again, feeling my body filling out like the thirsty steaming earth below me. Then, as I still drank insatiably, there came a gleam of lightning out of the gloom overhead, a brilliant yellow blaze, and by it I saw a few yards away a panther drinking at the same pool as myself, his gleaming eyes low down like mine upon the water, and by his side two apes, the black water running in at their gaping mouths, while out beyond were more pools, more drinking animals. Everything was drinking. I saw their outlined forms, the gleam shining on wet skins as though they were cut out in silver against the darkness, each beast steaming like a volcano as the Heaven-sent rain smoked from his fevered hide, all drinking for their lives, heedless of aught else--and then came the thunder.