Nothing
at all was to be found in the few scrubby fields about the well now
choked with masses of the insects. Whoever the people of this squalid
settlement had been, all were gone. The place was almost as bare as if
the sun's flames, themselves, had flared down and licked the village
to dust and ashes.
All the sufferers found, of any worth, was a few handfuls of dry dates
in one of the hovels and a water-jar with about two quarts of brackish
water.
This water the Master discovered, groping half blind through the hut.
Stale as it was, it far surpassed the strongly chemicalized water of
the River of Night, still remaining in the goat-skin. It smote him
with the most horrible temptation of his life. All the animal in his
nature, every parched atom of his body shouted.
"Take it! Drink, drink your fill! She will never know. Take it, and
drink!"
He seized the water-jar, indeed, but only to carry it with shaking
hands to her, where she lay in the welcome shadow of the hut. His lips
were black with thirst as he raised her head and cried to her:
"Here is water--real water! Drink!"
She obeyed, hardly more than half conscious. He gave her all he dared
to have her drink at once, nearly half.
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