I was suffering terribly. Every step jolted my poor shoulder. At one time, I wanted to stop, to sit down. Then I looked at Tanit-Zerga. She was walking ahead with her eyes almost closed. Her expression was an indefinable one of mingled suffering and determination. I closed my own eyes and went on. Such was the first stage. At dawn we stopped in a hollow in the rocks. Soon the heat forced us to rise to seek a deeper one. Tanit-Zerga did not eat. Instead, she swallowed a little of her half can of water. She lay drowsy all day. Galé ran about our rock giving plaintive little cries. I am not going to tell you about the second march. It was more horrible than anything you can imagine. I suffered all that it is humanly possible to suffer in the desert. But already I began to observe with infinite pity that my man's strength was outlasting the nervous force of my little companion. The poor child walked on without saying a word, chewing feebly one corner of her _haik_ which she had drawn over her face. Galé followed. The well toward which we were dragging ourselves was indicated on Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh's paper by the one word _Tissaririn. Tissaririn_ is the plural of _Tissarirt_ and means "two isolated trees." Day was dawning when finally I saw the two trees, two gum trees. Hardly a league separated us from them. I gave a cry of joy. "Courage, Tanit-Zerga, there is the well." She drew her veil aside and I saw the poor anguished little face. "So much the better," she murmured, "because otherwise...." She could not even finish the sentence. We finished the last half mile almost at a run. We already saw the hole, the opening of the well. Finally we reached it. It was empty. It is a strange sensation to be dying of thirst. At first the suffering is terrible. Then, gradually, it becomes less. You become partly unconscious. Ridiculous little things about your life occur to you, fly about you like mosquitoes. I began to remember my history composition for the entrance examination of Saint-Cyr, "The Campaign of Marengo." Obstinately I repeated to myself, "I have already said that the battery unmasked by Marmont at the moment of Kellerman's charge included eighteen pieces.... No, I remember now, it was only twelve pieces. I am sure it was twelve pieces." I kept on repeating: "Twelve pieces." Then I fell into a sort of coma. I was recalled from it by feeling a red-hot iron on my forehead. I opened my eyes. Tanit-Zerga was bending over me. It was her hand which burnt so. "Get up," she said. "We must go on." "Go on, Tanit-Zerga! The desert is on fire. The sun is at the zenith. It is noon." "We must go on," she repeated. Then I saw that she was delirious. She was standing erect. Her _haik_ had fallen to the ground and little Galé, rolled up in a ball, was asleep on it. Bareheaded, indifferent to the frightful sunlight, she kept repeating: "We must go on." A little sense came back to me. "Cover your head, Tanit-Zerga, cover your head."