watered for many hours. Morhange made his kneel, uncocked a skin, and
made the little ass drink. I certainly felt gratification at seeing
the poor bare flanks of the miserable beast pant with satisfaction. But
the responsibility was mine. Also I had seen Bou-Djema's aghast
expression, and the disapproval of the thirsty members of the caravan.
I remarked on it. How it was received! "What have I given," replied
Morhange, "was my own. We will reach El-Biodh to-morrow evening, about
six o'clock. Between here and there I know that I shall not be
thirsty." And that in a tone, in which for the first time he allowed
the authority of a Captain to speak. "That is easy to say," I thought,
ill-humoredly. "He knows that when he wants them, my water-skin, and
Bou-Djema's, are at his service." But I did not yet know Morhange very
well, and it is true that until the evening of the next day when we
reached El-Biodh, refusing our offers with smiling determination, he
drank nothing.

Shades of St. Francis of Assisi! Umbrian hills, so pure under the
rising sun! It was in the light of a like sunrise, by the border of a
pale stream leaping in full cascades from a crescent-shaped niche of
the gray rocks of Egere, that Morhange stopped. The unlooked for
waters rolled upon the sand, and we saw, in the light which mirrored
them, little black fish. Fish in the middle of the Sahara! All three
of us were mute before this paradox of Nature. One of them had strayed
into a little channel of sand. He had to stay there, struggling in
vain, his little white belly exposed to the air.... Morhange picked
him up, looked at him for a moment, and put him back into the little
stream. Shades of St. Francis. Umbrian hills.... But I have sworn not
to break the thread of the story by these untimely digressions.

* * * * *