was already too much: he would have to abandon the tent, the tea set, the cooking pot, the almanac and the saddle. He made the three cases into a bundle and tied the clothes, the food and the sextant on top, strapping the lot together with a length of cloth. He could put his arms through the cloth straps and carry the load like a rucksack on his back. He slung the goatskin water bag around his neck and let it dangle in front. It was a heavy load. Three months earlier he would have been able to carry it all day then play tennis in the evening, for he was a strong man; but the desert had weakened him. His bowels were water, his skin was a mass of sores, and he had lost twenty or thirty pounds. Without the camel he could not go far. Holding his compan in his hand, he started walking. He followed the compass wherever it led, resisting the temptation to divert around the hills, for he was navigating by dead reckoning over the final miles, and a fractional error could take him a fatal few hundred yards astray. He settled into a slow, long-strided waUL His mind emptied of hopes and fears and he concentrated on the compass and the sand. He managed to forget the pain of his ravaged body and put one foot in front of the other automatically, without thought and therefore without effort. The day cooled into everung. The water bottle became lighter around his neck as he consumed its contents. He refused to think about how much water was left: he was drinking six pints a day, he had calculated, and he knew there was not enough for another day. A flock of birds flew over his head, whistling noisily. He looked up, shading his eyes with his hand, and recognized them as 11chtenstein7s sandgrouse, desert birds, like brown pigeons that flocked to water every morning and evening. They were heading the same way as he was, which meant he was on the right track, but he knew they could fly fifty miles to water, so he could take little encouragement from them. Clouds gathered on the horizon as the desert cooled. Be. hind him, the San Bank lower and turned into a big yellow balloon. A little later a white moon appeared in a purple sky. He thought about stopping. Nobody could walk all night. But he had no tent, no blanket, no rice and no tea. And he 6 Ken Follett
was sure he was close to the well: by his reckoning he should have been there. He walked on. His calm was deserting him now. He had set his strength and his expertise against the ruthless desert, and it began to look as if the desert would win. He thought again of the camel he had left behind, and how it had sat on the hillock, with the tranquillity of exhaustion, waiting for death. He avould not wait for death, he thought: when it be- came inevitable he ~would rush to meet it. Not for him the hours of agony and cncroaching madness-that would be undignified. He had his knife. The thought made him feel desperate, and now he could no longer repress the fear. The moon went down, but the landscape was bright with starlight. He saw his mother in the distance, and she said: “Don’t say I never warned you!” He heard a railway train that chugged along with his heartbeat, slowly. Small rocks moved in his path like scampering rats. He smelled roast lamb. He breasted a rise and saw, close by, a red glow of the fire over which the meat had been roasted, and a small boy beside it gnawing the bones. Ilicre were the tents around the fire, the bobbled camels grazing the scattered thorns, and the wellhead beyond. He walked into the hallucination. The people in the dream looked up at him, startled. A tall man stood up and spoke. The traveler pulled at his howli, partially unwinding the cloth to reveal his face. The tall man stepped forward, shocked, and said, “My cousinf” The traveler understood that this was not, after all, an illusion; and he smiled faintly and collapsed.