The sun rose higher and higher as the morning advanced, and scorched us till it seemed as if we had not a single drop of moisture left in our bruised and wearied bodies. I feebly wondered if we were doomed to be a sort of modern edition of the “Wandering Jew,” with Dante’s “Inferno” as the sphere of operations. When I suggested the idea to my companions in a vain attempt at a joke, it did not provoke even a smile. Our boots were ruined, and our feet sore and cramped from springing from one piece of loose rock to another. The lava rolled and slipped from under us, bruising our ankles; we were parched with thirst, hot, dog-tired, and altogether in a most miserable plight. Suddenly George gave vent to a feeble hurrah! El Hakim and I gazed wonderingly at him, trying to grasp the reason for such a singular demonstration. He indicated by a gesture that we should look ahead. We did so, and immediately endeavoured, as well as our parched and swollen tongues would permit, to follow his example, though the attempt was more or less a failure. There before us was a sharp dip; at the foot stretched one of the familiar, gravelly, sandy plains covered with thorn trees. We had grumbled enough at them heretofore, but after that terrific “cinder-heap” the thorn-covered plain seemed a veritable paradise. As if to make amends for our sufferings, we at that moment caught sight of Mount Sheba, which was our objective on leaving camp that morning. It was, alas! still some miles distant, but it meant water. Away we went at a quick walk, animated by only one desire—the desire for water. There were no signs of our safari, but we knew that they could easily follow our tracks, so we hurried on. Hour after hour we pushed on, now walking and anon half running, in our eagerness to reach the river. We met several rhinoceros, but such was our hurry we did not stop to speak. Suddenly a group of the thrice-blessed Doum palms appeared at the bottom of a valley. We raced down the slope, and there at the bottom lay a pool of beautiful, cool, clear, sparkling water. Ye gods! what pen can hope to adequately describe the supreme delight of a long, long draught of cool, pure water, after hours of such a sun as we had been exposed to on the “cinder-heap?” We lay down on our stomachs, and, plunging our faces beneath the surface, drank our fill of the life-preserving fluid. When we were satisfied, we laved our chests, and, playing with the water, watched the sparkling crystal drops drip from our fingers and fall with a musical splash into the parent pool. It was not such a long time, after all, that we had been without water, but the sun was terribly fierce on the heaps of lava, and, in addition, the horrible uncertainty as to whether we were not going further and further away from water, increased our thirst to quite an abnormal degree.