The hoarse imploring moans that passed along the column grew more and more frequent; here and there exhausted men dropped to their knees or fell face down in the scorching sand, begging their comrades to put an end to their suffering.
The others turned morosely away from them and continued their way until the pleas died away behind them and beyond sand-hills so soft in their configuration. Sand, burning hot sand; monstrous quantities of sand, stretching to infinity; silent and evil sand that seemed to have drowned the whole universe in its stifling, treacherous flames.
Ahead of them a patch of silver in the golden fire of the sun’s rays appeared in the distance. The Libyan gave a brief shout of encouragement. Clearer and clearer, against the brownish background, appeared patches of ground covered with salt crystals that shone with an intolerably brilliant blue gleam.
The sand-dunes grew smaller and soon gave way to hard, well-packed sand; the feet of the marchers moved more freely, liberated from the cloying embrace of the friable sand. The hard yellow clay, furrowed with dark cracks, seemed to them like the stone-paved path of some palace garden.
The sun was still a hand’s breadth from the zenith when the insurgent slaves reached a low, cliff-like ledge of stratified brown stone and from there turned sharply to the left, to the south-west. In a short re-entrant, that bit into the cliff at a wide angle so that from a distance it looked like the black entrance to a cave, was an ancient well, a spring with cool, fresh water.
In order to prevent disorder amongst people already mad with thirst, Cavius placed the strongest of the slaves to guard the entrance to the gully. The weakest were allowed to drink first.
The sun had long passed the zenith and the men kept on drinking as though they would never stop; they lay for a while in the shade of the cliff with distended bellies and then crawled ‘back to the water again. The runaways gradually regained their vitality and soon the rapid speech of the hardy Negroes could be heard accompanied by occasional laughter and jocular altercation… No joy, however, came to the men with returning life — too many of their faithful comrades had remained behind to die in the labyrinth of sand-dunes, comrades who had only just entered the path to freedom, who had fought bravely, with contempt for ‘death, comrades whose efforts had merged in the supreme common effort with those who had been spared.
Pandion was astonished at the change that had taken place in those slaves with whom he had spent such a long time in the shehne. That dull indifference to their surroundings that gave the same expression to all their tired, worn-out faces, was gone.
Eyes that had been dull and listless were now looking round them full of life and interest and the features of the sombre faces seemed to be more sharply defined. They were already people and not slaves and Pandion remembered how right Cavius had been in his wisdom when he reproached Pandion with contempt for his companions. Pandion had had too little experience of life to be able to understand people. He had the mistaken view that the inhibition born of long captivity was natural in them.
The men crowded on to the small patches of life-giving shade in the gully. In a short time they were all overcome by deep sleep; there was no fear of the pursuit overtaking them on that day — who but people prepared to face death for the sake of liberty could pass through the fiery hell of that sea of sand in daytime?
The runaways rested until sunset by which time their tired feet were again ready for the journey. The small quantity of food that the strongest had managed to carry through the desert was carefully shared out amongst ail of them.
There was a long journey to be made to the next well; the Libyan said that they would have to keep on all night, but that at dawn, — before the day grew hot, they would find water. After that the road again lay through sand-hills, the last between them and the big oasis. Fortunately the stretch of sand-hills was not of great width, no more than that they had already passed, and if they set out in the evening, when the sun was in the south-west, they would reach the big oasis during the night and find food there. They would only have to go twenty-four hours without, food.
All this did not seem so very terrible to people who had suffered so much. The chief thing that encouraged them and gave them strength was the fact that they were free and were moving farther and farther away from the hated Land of Quemt, that the possibility of their being overtaken was diminishing.
The sunset died away, grey ash covered its flaming red embers. Drinking their fill for the last time the runaways moved on.
The depressing heat had gone, scattered by the black wings of night, and the darkness tenderly caressed skin that had been burned by the flames of the desert.
Their way lay across a low, level plateau covered with sharp-edged stones that cut the feet of the less cautious.
By midnight the runaways dropped down into a wide valley sprinkled with grey, round boulders. These strange stones, between one and three cubits in diameter, lay about like stone balls with which some unknown gods had been playing. The men were no longer in a column but walked on without any formation, cutting diagonally across the valley towards a rise that could be seen some distance in front of them.
After a terrible stupefying day that had shown the weakness of man with such ruthlessness, the quiet calm of the night gave rise to profound meditation. It seemed to Pandion that the endless desert rose up to the bowl of the sky, the stars seemed quite near in the transparent air, permeated with a kind of glow. The moon rose and a silver carpet of light lay on the dark earth.
The party of runaway slaves reached the rise. The gentle slope consisted of blocks of limestone, polished by the fine sand until they shone and reflected the light of the moon in what looked like a blue glass staircase.
When Pandion set foot on their cold, slippery surface it seemed to him that he had only to go a little higher and he would reach the dark blue bowl of the sky.
The rise came to an end, the staircase vanished and the long descent began into the dark valley, covered with coarse sand, that lay black below them. The valley was encircled with a chain of serrated crags that jutted out of the sand at all angles, like the stumps of gigantic tree-trunks. By dawn the party had reached the cliff and for a long time wandered through a labyrinth of crevasses until their Libyan leader found the well. From the cliff could be seen the serried ranks of a new army of sand-dunes that formed a hostile ring around the rocks amongst which the runaways had taken refuge. Shadows of deep violet lay between the rosy slopes of the sand hills. While they were close to water there was nothing terrible about the sea of sand.
Kidogo found a place protected from the sun by a huge stone cube that hung over walls of sandstone cut away on the northern side by a deep, dry watercourse. There was sufficient shade for the whole party between the rocks and they lay down to rest until sunset.
The tired men immediately dropped off to sleep — there was nothing to do but wait until the sun, raging in the high heavens, became more amenable. The sky that had seemed so close to them during the night had now receded to an unfathomable distance and from that great height blinded and burned the men as though in revenge for the breathing space given them during the hours of darkness. Time went on, the peacefully sleeping people were surrounded by a sea of fiery sunlight that cut them off from their native lands where the sun did not destroy all living things.