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Updated: June 15, 2025
I hesitated to eat them, for many of the desert berries are poisonous, and almost all are bitter and acrid, but I could see no t'samma, and so I bit one, hesitatingly at first, but as the sharp, delicious flavor penetrated my scorched palate, ravenously.
He would bring out the blue diamond and pretend to consult it as an oracle, and it would always promise him wonderful things! Sometimes for game was now scarce it would be a fat buck for breakfast; sometimes a vast plain of t'samma, or a big pool of water; and his prophecies always ended in unlimited diamonds and unlimited wives!
Our horses were rested and refreshed, and we pushed on throughout the night, till just before dawn we stumbled through a small patch of t'samma, and immediately decided to give our horses the benefit of them. Unfortunately, daylight showed the patch to be but a tiny one, where an arbitrary shower had fallen at the right season, and it barely sufficed for the day.
I had no idea how long I had been lying there unconscious, but the idea of pushing north had now become an obsession with me, and I staggered to the highest dune to look around me. I was still in a wilderness of dunes, but I noticed that what little vegetation there was, was new and strange to me; indeed, except for the t'samma there was scarce a bush or plant I could recognize.
That night we had to wait late before trekking, as the moon was waning, and in the hideous jumble of dunes before us, we feared to trust solely to the stars. We were glad to rest too, and let our horses rest and take their fill of the last t'samma they were likely to get.
The horses would scarce be able to struggle back to the nearest t'samma we had left, and in any case, to go back, beaten! No, if Inyati gave any hope at all, I would push on as long as life lasted. So I lay and mused by the flickering fire, listening for the occasional yelp of a jackal, or the horrible laughter of a hyena.
My waterbottle was nearly empty already, and the old haunting dread of thirst was beginning to fill my mind, but soon this fear left me, for within a mile I found t'samma flourishing, and at the first pile of rocks a little spring of water. Cheered and encouraged I made good progress in spite of the now blazing sun, and soon I reached the pile of rocks.
A dream of suffering, of incessant wandering from pan to pan; here a few mouthfuls of stagnant water, and there a few t'samma still keeping myself and the horses alive. For days the wandering must have been purely mechanical: but one day I came to myself just as the sun was setting. I felt weak and exhausted but perfectly sane.
"We must rest, and eat," at length said Inyati, "so too must the horses, or they may die before there is need." We stripped the loads from the poor brutes, and divided the bags of t'samma we had piled upon them, and soon they were munching away contentedly, whilst we rigged up some sort of shelter and lay and panted till the evening. Then, and then only, did we discuss what we were next to do.
So, again I was respited; but I knew it to be only a respite, for the bushes were few, and I could find no sign of others or of t'samma.
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