As night wore slowly on the deep sand became a weariness. Sleep grew importunate; her fingers pressed down our eyelids and the folds of her trailing robe entangled our lead-shod feet. The moon, after her first majestic soar above the horizon, seemed to climb slower and more slowly towards the zenith. It would have been a luxury to fall prone on the velvet-soft sand and sink at once into dreamless oblivion. But this might not be; our plan of campaign had been cunningly devised and had to be strictly adhered to. We were about to contend with an enemy who gave no quarter. The fiat of Andries had gone forth; we were to travel on without pause until sunrise. Then we might sleep if the sun permitted. At length the seemingly interminable night ended: "the phantom of false morning," which so often had mocked us, gave place to dawn--virginal and splendid. Then day came on rapid feet. Just as the sun cleared the rim of the earth the wagon halted, and at once the yokes fell from the necks of the tired oxen. Within a few minutes we lay fast asleep beneath a hastily-constructed sun-screen. Scarcely more than an hour had elapsed before the heat awoke us and we sprang to our feet with hardly a trace of fatigue. The strong sunshine seemed to sting us to vigour; it was aether rather than air that we breathed. Around us lay infinite expanses, glowing and quivering,-- radiating fervour against fervour into the moveless atmosphere. Before us and to our right and left the horizon was unbroken. Behind us could still be faintly traced the contour of the hilly country from which we had yesterday emerged. The oxen, after feeding a little, wandered about--attempting from time to time to escape homeward. They dreaded this plunge into the waterless waste. They instinctively anticipated the heavy sufferings to which they were doomed. So far they were not painfully thirsty; cattle bred on the borders of the desert in their search for pasturage often go voluntarily waterless for forty-eight hours at a stretch. Even in summer they do not feel this much of an inconvenience. Late in the afternoon the team was driven up and once more inspanned. Again we pressed forward on our course. The heat was still intense; we knew it would last until sundown. The primrose-tinted carpet of the desert seemed to have turned to flame. Before us some mocking genius of the sky painted mirage-pictures. Blue seas gemmed with verdant islands, rocky beaches from which sprang groves of lofty trees,--mountain ranges clothed with boskage and suggesting cool streams in their valleys--enticed us onward. Now and then the pictures grew distorted; occasionally they became inverted in the twinkling of an eye. Then the mountains stood poised upon their summits and the trees hung downward. Perhaps the operator of the magic lantern which projected these phantasms on the sky-screen was the vizier of the Thirst King--striving to lure the unwary to a terrible doom.