Kasim was so exhausted that he could not go with me. As he was at any rate on the right track, and it was now most important to find something to eat, I went alone to the pool, drank, bathed, and rested, and then walked southwards. At nine o'clock a violent westerly storm arose, driving clouds of sand along the ground. After wandering three hours it occurred to me that it was not wise to leave the beneficent pool. I therefore turned back, but after half an hour only found instead a very small pool with indifferent water. It was no use wandering about in such a storm, for I could not see where I was going; the wind roared and whistled through the wood, and I was half dead with fatigue and hunger. I therefore crept into a small thicket close to this pool, where I was out of reach of the storm, and making a pillow of my boots and cap, slept soundly and heavily. Since May 1 I had had no proper sleep. When I woke it was already dark, and the storm still howled through the wood. I was now so tortured by hunger that I began to eat grass, flowers, and reed shoots. There were numbers of young frogs in the pool. They were bitter, but I pinched their necks and swallowed them whole. After eating my supper I collected a store of branches to keep up a fire during the night, and then I crept into my lair in the thicket and gazed into the fire for a couple of hours while the storm raged outside. Then I went to sleep again. At dawn on May 7 I crept out of the thicket and decided to march southwards until I met with human beings. This time I took water with me in my boots, but after a few hours my feet were so sore and blistered that I had to bind them up in long strips of my shirt. At length to my delight I found a sheepfold on the bank; it had evidently not been used for a long time, but it showed that shepherds must live in the woods somewhere. At noon heat and fatigue drove me into the wood again, where I ate a breakfast of grass and reeds. After a rest I wandered on again hour after hour towards the south, but at eight o'clock I could go no farther, and before it became quite dark I tried to make myself comfortable on a small space sheltered by poplars and bushes, and there as usual I lighted my camp fire. I had nothing else to do but lie and stare into the flames and listen to the curious mournful sounds in the wood. Sometimes I heard tapping steps and dry twigs cracking. It might be tigers, but I trusted that they would not venture to attack me just when I had been saved in such a remarkable manner.