I lay for ten hours wide awake. At seven o'clock I took the wooden haft of the spade and went alone through the wood, for Kasim could not move. I dropped down again and again on fallen trunks to rest; a few more staggering steps and again a rest on a stump. When I could not hold myself up, I crawled inch by inch through the brushwood, tearing my hands and clothes. It grew dusk and then dark in the wood. I felt sleep gradually creeping over me to rob me of life. For if I had fallen asleep now, I should never have awakened again. My last struggle was, then, against drowsiness. Then the wood suddenly came to an end and the bed of the Khotan river lay before me. But the bottom was dry, as dry as the sand in the desert! I was at the summer margin of the river, where water only flows when the snow melts on the mountains to the south. But I was not going to die on the bank; I would cross the whole bed before I gave myself up for lost. The bed was a mile and a quarter broad, a terrible distance for my strength. I walked slowly with the spade-handle for a stick, crawling for long distances and often resting and exerting all the force of my will to resist sleep. Hitherto we had been always making eastwards, but this night I walked involuntarily south-east. It was as though I were guided by an unseen hand. The crescent moon threw a pale light over the dry riverbed. I went towards the middle and expected to see a silvery streak glisten on a sheet of water. After an interval, which seemed endless, I descried the line of wood on the eastern bank. It became more distinct. A fallen poplar lay projecting over a hollow in the river-bed and on the bank were close thickets of bushes and reeds. I rested once more. Was it possible that the whole bed was dry? I felt that all my remaining strength would be needed to reach the bank. Was I to die of thirst in the middle of a river-bed? I rose painfully to walk the last bit, but I had not taken many steps before I stopped short. A duck rose on whirring wings, I heard the plashing sound of water, and the next moment I stood at the edge of a fresh, cool, beautiful pool.