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however, before Joe exclaimed:

      “I’m choking, and the heat is getting worse! I’m not surprised at that, though,” he added, consulting the thermometer; “one hundred and forty degrees!”

      “The sand scorches me,” said the hunter, “as though it had just come out of a furnace; and not a cloud in this sky of fire. It’s enough to drive one mad!”

      “Let us not despair,” responded the doctor. “In this latitude these intense heats are invariably followed by storms, and the latter come with the suddenness of lightning. Notwithstanding this disheartening clearness of the sky, great atmospheric changes may take place in less than an hour.”

      “But,” asked Kennedy, “is there any sign whatever of that?”

      “Well,” replied the doctor, “I think that there is some slight symptom of a fall in the barometer.”

      “May Heaven hearken to you, Samuel! for here we are pinned to the ground, like a bird with broken wings.”

      “With this difference, however, my dear Dick, that our wings are unhurt, and I hope that we shall be able to use them again.”

      “Ah! wind! wind!” exclaimed Joe; “enough to carry us to a stream or a well, and we’ll be all right. We have provisions enough, and, with water, we could wait a month without suffering; but thirst is a cruel thing!”

      It was not thirst alone, but the unchanging sight of the desert, that fatigued the mind. There was not a variation in the surface of the soil, not a hillock of sand, not a pebble, to relieve the gaze. This unbroken level discouraged the beholder, and gave him that kind of malady called the “desert-sickness.” The impassible monotony of the arid blue sky, and the vast yellow expanse of the desert-sand, at length produced a sensation of terror. In this inflamed atmosphere the heat appeared to vibrate as it does above a blazing hearth, while the mind grew desperate in contemplating the limitless calm, and could see no reason why the thing should ever end, since immensity is a species of eternity.

      Thus, at last, our hapless travellers, deprived of water in this torrid heat, began to feel symptoms of mental disorder. Their eyes swelled in their sockets, and their gaze became confused.

      When night came on, the doctor determined to combat this alarming tendency by rapid walking. His idea was to pace the sandy plain for a few hours, not in search of any thing, but simply for exercise.

      “Come along!” he said to his companions; “believe me, it will do you good.”

      “Out of the question!” said Kennedy; “I could not walk a step.”

      “And I,” said Joe, “would rather sleep!”

      “But sleep, or even rest, would be dangerous to you, my friends; you must react against this tendency to stupor. Come with me!”

      But the doctor could do nothing with them, and, therefore, set off alone, amid the starry clearness of the night. The first few steps he took were painful, for they were the steps of an enfeebled man quite out of practice in walking. However, he quickly saw that the exercise would be beneficial to him, and pushed on several miles to the westward. Once in rapid motion, he felt his spirits greatly cheered, when, suddenly, a vertigo came over him; he seemed to be poised on the edge of an abyss; his knees bent under him; the vast solitude struck terror to his heart; he found himself the minute mathematical point, the centre of an infinite circumference, that is to say—a nothing! The balloon had disappeared entirely in the deepening gloom. The doctor, cool, impassible, reckless explorer that he was, felt himself at last seized with a nameless dread. He strove to retrace his steps, but in vain. He called aloud. Not even an echo replied, and his voice died out in the empty vastness of surrounding space, like a pebble cast into a bottomless gulf; then, down he sank, fainting, on the sand, alone, amid the eternal silence of the desert.

      At midnight he came to, in the arms of his faithful follower, Joe. The latter, uneasy at his master’s prolonged absence, had set out after him, easily tracing him by the clear imprint of his feet in the sand, and had found him lying in a swoon.

      “What has been the matter, sir?” was the first inquiry.

      “Nothing, Joe, nothing! Only a touch of weakness, that’s all. It’s over now.”

      “Oh! it won’t amount to any thing, sir, I’m sure of that; but get up on your feet, if you can. There! lean upon me, and let us get back to the balloon.”

      And the doctor, leaning on Joe’s arm, returned along the track by which he had come.

      “You were too bold, sir; it won’t do to run such risks. You might have been robbed,” he added, laughing. “But, sir, come now, let us talk seriously.”

      “Speak! I am listening to you.”

      “We must positively make up our minds to do something. Our present situation cannot last more than a few days longer, and if we get no wind, we are lost.”

      The doctor made no reply.

      “Well, then, one of us must sacrifice himself for the good of all, and it is most natural that it should fall to me to do so.”

      “What have you to propose? What is your plan?”

      “A very simple one! It is to take provisions enough, and to walk right on until I come to some place, as I must do, sooner or later. In the mean time, if Heaven sends you a good wind, you need not wait, but can start again. For my part, if I come to a village, I’ll work my way through with a few Arabic words that you can write for me on a slip of paper, and I’ll bring you help or lose my hide. What do you think of my plan?”

      “It is absolute folly, Joe, but worthy of your noble heart. The thing is impossible. You will not leave us.”

      “But, sir, we must do something, and this plan can’t do you any harm, for, I say again, you need not wait; and then, after all, I may succeed.”

      “No, Joe, no! We will not separate. That would only be adding sorrow to trouble. It was written that matters should be as they are; and it is very probably written that it shall be quite otherwise by-and-by. Let us wait, then, with resignation.”

      “So be it, master; but take notice of one thing: I give you a day longer, and I’ll not wait after that. To-day is Sunday; we might say Monday, as it is one o’clock in the morning, and if we don’t get off by Tuesday, I’ll run the risk. I’ve made up my mind to that!”

      The doctor made no answer, and in a few minutes they got back to the car, where he took his place beside Kennedy, who lay there plunged in silence so complete that it could not be considered sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENTH.

      Table of Contents

      Terrific Heat.—Hallucinations.—The Last Drops of Water.—Nights of Despair.—An Attempt at Suicide.—The Simoom.—The Oasis.—The Lion and Lioness.

      The doctor’s first care, on the morrow, was to consult the barometer. He found that the mercury had scarcely undergone any perceptible depression.

      “Nothing!” he murmured, “nothing!”

      He got out of the car and scrutinized the weather; there was only the same heat, the same cloudless sky, the same merciless drought.

      “Must we, then, give up to despair?” he exclaimed, in agony.

      Joe did not open his lips. He was buried in his own thoughts, and planning the expedition he had proposed.

      Kennedy got up, feeling very ill, and a prey to nervous agitation. He was suffering horribly with thirst, and his swollen tongue and lips could hardly articulate a syllable.

      There still remained a few drops of water. Each of them knew this, and each was thinking of it, and felt himself drawn toward

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