The woman's basket was now light, indeed, across her shoulders. Not all her begging had induced the Master to let her carry the water-jug there. This, too, he was carrying. All night long, stopping only when one or the other fell, they ploughed over basalt and hornblende schist that lacerated their feet, over blanched immensities under the steel moon, across grim, black ridges and through a basin of clay, circled by hills. Strange apparitions mocked and mowed before them, but grimly they gave no heed. This, they both realized in moments of lucidity, was the last trek. Either they must find the sea, before another night, or madness would sink its fangs into their brains. And madness meant--the end. Their whole consciousness was pain. This pain localized itself especially in their heads, round which some _jinnee_ of the waste had riveted red-hot iron bands. There was other pain, too, in the limping feet cased in the last of the _babooches_, now stiffened with blood. And in the throat and lungs, what was this burning? CHAPTER LII "Thálassa! Thálassa!" Another of those horrible, red mornings, with a brass circle of horizon flaming all around in the most extraordinary fireworks topped by an azure zenith, found them still crawling south-westwards making perhaps a mile an hour. Disjointed words and sentences kept framing themselves in the man's mind; above all, a sentence he had read long ago in Greek, somewhere. Where had he read that? Oh, in Xenophon, of course. In _The Retreat of the Ten Thousand._ The Master gulped it aloud, in a dead voice: "Most terrible of all is--the desert--for it is full-of a great want." After a while he knew that he was trying to laugh. "A great want!" he repeated. "A great--" Presently it was night again. The Master's mind cleared. Yes, there was the woman, lying in the sand near him. But where was the date-stick basket? Where was the last of the food? He tried to think. He could remember nothing. But reason told him they must have eaten the last of the food and thrown the basket away. His shoulders felt strangely light. What was this? The water-bag was gone, too? But that did not matter. There had been only a little of that chemicalized water left, anyhow. Perhaps they had drunk it all, or bathed their faces and necks with it. Who could tell? The water-sack was gone; that was all he knew. A great fear stabbed him. The water-jar! Was that still on his back? As he felt the pull of a thong, and dragged the jar around so that he could blink at it, a wonderful relief for a moment deadened his pain. "_Allah isélmak!_" he croaked, blessing the scant water the jar still held. He realized the woman was looking at him. "Water!" he whispered. "Let us drink again--and go on!" She nodded silently. He loosed the thong, took the jar and peered into its neck, gauging the small amount of water still there. Then he held it to her lips.