Shade, and sleep, and water seemed the only things in the
world worth having just then.
The second day they slept less, but it was nearly a week before they
could be said to be wide-awake again. Such a pair of scare-crows as
they looked! Ahmed was almost naked. The robbers had taken part of his
clothes, and the desert thorns the rest. Haggard, wild, blackened by
the sun, they gazed at each other with horror; each thought, "Do I look
like that?" and each tried to hide from the other his own dismay.
They could never tell afterward how long they remained at the oasis. It
seemed years, but I suppose it could not have been more than weeks. All
day long they looked wistfully toward the horizon, in hopes of a
caravan, but the caravan never came. Slowly the dates dwindled in the
bag; slowly the precious water diminished in the well; a little longer,
and starvation would be upon them. They scarcely spoke to each other
those last days, but sat each by himself in a sort of dull despair. At
night, when they fell asleep, they dreamed of food, and woke in the
morning to feel themselves still hungry. It was horrible!
Then came a morning when they rose to find the hard desert outline,
which they knew so well, vanished and gone, and in its stead a smooth,
shining lake, fringed with trees and dotted with feathery, fairy
islands.
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