September 2, 2025 • 20 mins
Discover the enchanting world of Day And Night Stories, featuring fifteen captivating short tales by Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (1869 ‚ì 1951). Renowned as one of the most prolific ghost story writers, Blackwoods work blends the supernatural with the ethereal, inviting readers into a realm of wonder and intrigue. A journalist and broadcasting narrator, he has been acclaimed for his consistently exceptional storytelling, with literary critic S. T. Joshi noting that his contributions stand among the finest in the genre. Immerse yourself in these timeless narratives that explore the mysteries of life and the unknown.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Story ten of Day and Night Stories by Algernon Blackwood.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Story ten
by Water. The night before young Larson left to take
up his new appointment in Egypt, he went to the clairvoyant.
He neither believed nor disbelieved. He felt no interest, for
(00:20):
he already knew his past and did not wish to
know his future. Just to please me, Jim, the girl pleaded,
the woman is wonderful. Before I had been five minutes
with her, she told me your initials, so there must
be something in it. She read your thought. He smiled indulgently.
Even I can do that, But the girl was in earnest.
(00:42):
He yielded, and that night, at his farewell dinner, he
came to give his report of the interview. The result
was meager and unconvincing. Money was coming to him. He
was soon to make a voyage, and he would never marry.
So you see how silly it all is, he laughed,
for they were to be married when his first promotion came.
(01:06):
He gave the details, however, making a little story of
it in the way he knew she loved. But was
that all, Jim the Girl asked, it looking rather hard
into his face. Aren't you hiding something from me? He
hesitated a moment, then burst out laughing at her clever discernment.
There was a little more, he confessed, But you take
(01:28):
it all so seriously. I he had to tell it then.
Of course, the woman had told him a lot of
gibberish about friendly and unfriendly elements. She said, water was
unfriendly to me. I was to be careful of water,
or else I should come to harm by it. Fresh
water only, he hastened to add, seeing that the idea
(01:50):
of shipwreck was in her mind. Drowning, the girl asked quickly, Yes,
he admitted, with reluctance, but still laughing. She did, saying,
though drowning in no ordinary way. The girl's face showed
uneasiness a moment. What does that mean? Drowning in no
ordinary way? She asked, a catch in her breath, but
(02:13):
that he could not tell her because he did not
know himself. He gave, therefore the exact words, you will drown,
but will not know you drown. It was unwise of him,
he wished afterwards he had invented a happier report, or
had kept this detail back. I'm safe in Egypt. Anyhow,
(02:34):
he laughed, I shall be a clever man if I
can find enough water in the desert to do me harm.
And all the way from Trieste to Alexandria, he remembered
the promise she had extracted that he would never once
go on the Nile unless duty made it imperative for
him to do so. He kept that promise, Like the
literal faithful soul he was. His love was equal to
(02:58):
the somewhat quixotic Sciens sacrifice. It occasionally involved fresh water.
In Egypt there was practically none other, and in any case,
the Natrum works where his duty lay, had their headquarters
some distance out into the desert. The river, with its
banks of welcome, refreshing verdure, was not even visible. Months
(03:21):
passed quickly, and the time for leave came within measurable distance.
In the long interval, Luck had played the cards kindly
for him. Vacancies had occurred, early, promotion seemed likely, and
his letters were full of plans to bring her out
to share a little house of their own. His health, however,
had not improved. The dryness did not suit him. Even
(03:45):
in this short period. His blood had thinned, his nervous
system deteriorated, and contrary to the doctor's prophecy, the waterless
air had told upon his sleep a damp climate liked
him best, and once the sun had touched him with
its fiery finger. His letters made no mention of this.
(04:05):
He described the life to her, the work, the sport,
the pleasant people, and his chances of increased pay and
early marriage. And a week before he sailed, he rode out,
upon a final act of duty, to inspect the latest
diggings his company were making. His course lay some twenty
miles into the desert behind elk Chobak and towards the
(04:27):
limestone hills of Gubiel Haidi, and he went alone, carrying
lunch and tea, for it was the weekly holiday of
Friday and the men were not at work. The accident
was ordinary enough. On his way back, in the heat
of early afternoon, his pony stumbled against a boulder on
the treacherous desert, film threw him heavily, broke the girth,
(04:51):
bolted before he could seize the reins again, and left
him stranded some ten or twelve miles from home. There
was a pain in his life, his knee that made
walking difficult. A buzzing in his head that troubled sight
and made the landscape swim while worse than either his
provisions fastened to the saddle had vanished with the frightened
(05:13):
pony into those blazing leagues of sand. He was alone
in the desert, beneath the pitiless afternoon sun, twelve miles
of utterly exhausting country between him and safety. Under normal conditions,
he would have covered the distance in four hours, reaching
home by dark, but his knee pained him so that
(05:35):
a mile an hour proved the best he could possibly do.
He reflected a few minutes, the wisest course was to
sit down and wait till the pony told its obvious
story to the stable and help should come. And this
was what he did. For the scorching heat and glare
were dangerous, they were terrible. He was shaken and bewildered
(05:56):
by his fall, hungry and weak into the bargain, and
an hour's painful scrambling over the baked and burning little
gorges must have speedily caused complete prostration. He sat down
and rubbed his aching knee. It was quite a little adventure, yet,
though he knew the desert might not be lightly trifled with.
(06:18):
He felt at the moment nothing more than this, and
the amusing description of it he would give in his
letter or intoxicating thought by word of mouth. In the
heat of the sun, he began to feel drowsy. A
soft torquor crept over him. He dozed, He fell asleep.
It was a long, dreamless sleep, for when he woke
(06:41):
at length, the sun had just gone down. The dusk
lay awfully upon the enormous desert, and the air was chilly.
The cold had waked him quickly, as though on purpose.
The red glow faded from the sky, the first star shone.
It was dark, the heavens were deep violet. He looked
(07:02):
round and realized that his sense of direction had gone entirely.
Great hunger was in him. The cold already was bitter
as the wind rose, but the pain in his knee
having eased, He got up and walked a little, and
in a moment lost sight of the spot where he
had been lying. The shadowy desert swallowed it. Ah. He realized,
(07:25):
this is not an English field, or more, I'm in
the desert. The safe thing to do was to remain
exactly where he was. Only thus could the rescuers find him.
Once he wandered, he was done, for it was strange
the search party had not yet arrived. To keep warm, however,
he was compelled to move, so he made a little
(07:48):
pile of stones to mark the place, and walked round
and round it in a circle of some dozen yards diameter.
He limped badly, and the hunger gnawed dreadfully. But after
all the adventure was not so terrible. The amusing side
of it kept uppermost. Still. Though fragile in body, his
spirit was not unduly timid or imaginative. He could last
(08:12):
out the night, or, if the worst came to the worst,
the next day as well. But when he watched the
little group of stones, he saw that there were dozens
of them, scores, hundreds, thousands of these little groups of stones.
The desert's face, of course, is thickly strewn with them.
The original one was lost in the first five minutes,
(08:35):
so he sat down again, But the biting cold and
the wind that licked his very skin beneath the light
clothing soon forced him up again. It was ominous, and
the night huge and shelterless. The shaft of greens adiacal
light that hung so strangely in the western sky. For
hours had faded away. The stars were out in their
(08:59):
bright thousands. No guide was anywhere. The wind moaned and
puffed among the sandy mounds. The vast sheet of desert
stretched appallingly upon the world. He heard the jackal's cry,
and with the jackal's cry came suddenly the unwelcome realization
that no play was in this adventure anymore. But that
(09:22):
oblique reality stared at him through the surrounding darkness. He
faced it at bay. He was genuinely lost. Thought blocked
in him. I must be calm and think, he said aloud.
His voice woke no echo. It was small and dead.
Something gigantic aided Instantly He got up and walked again.
(09:45):
Why did no one come? Hours had passed the pony
had long ago found it stable, or had it run
madly in another direction? Altogether he worked out possibilities, lightening
his belt. The cold was searching. He never had been,
never could be warm again. The hot sunshine of a
(10:08):
few hours ago seemed the merest dream. Unfamiliar with hardship,
he knew not what to do, but he took his
coat and shirt off, vigorously rubbing his skin, where the
dried perspiration of the afternoon still caused clammy shivers. Swung
his arms furiously like a London cabman, and quickly dressed again.
(10:30):
Though the wind upon his bare back was fearful, he
felt warmer a little. He lay down, exhausted, sheltered by
an overhanging limestone crag, and took snatches of fitful dog
sleep while the wind drove over head and the dry
sand pricked his skin. One face continually was near him,
(10:52):
one pair of tender eyes, two dear hands smoothed him.
He smelt the perfume of light brown hair. It was
all natural enough. His whole thought, in his misery, ran
to her in England, England, where there were soft fresh grass,
big sheltering trees, hemlock and honeysuckle in the hedges, while
(11:14):
the hard black desert guarded him, and consciousness dipped away
at little intervals under this dry and pitiless Egyptian sky.
It was perhaps five in the morning when a voice spoke,
and he started up with a horrid jerk, the voice
of that clairvoyant woman. The sentence died away into the darkness,
(11:37):
but one word remained. Water At first, he wondered, but
at once explanation came. Cause and effect were obvious. The
clew was physical. His body needed water, and so the
thought came up into his mind. He was thirsty. This
was the moment when fear first really touched him. Hunger
(11:59):
was mannagedible more or less for a day or two, certainly,
but thirst, thirst, and the desert were an evil pair that,
by cumulative suggestion gathering since childhood days, brought terror in.
Once in the mind, it could not be dislodged. In
spite of his best efforts, the ghastly thing grew passionately
(12:22):
because his thirst grew too. He had smoked much, had
eaten spiced things at lunch, had breathed in alkali. With
the dry, scorched air. He searched for a cool flint
pebble to put into his burning mouth, but found only
angular scraps of dusty limestone. There were no pebbles here.
(12:43):
The cold helped a little to counteract, but already he
knew in himself, subconsciously, the dread of something that was coming.
What was it? He tried to hide the thought and
bury it out of sight. The utter futility of his
tiny strength against the power of the universe appalled him,
and then he knew the merciless sun was on the way,
(13:05):
already rising. Its return was like the presage of execution
to him. It came with true horror. He watched the marvelous,
swift dawn break over the Sandy Sea. The eastern sky
glowed hurriedly as from crimsoned fires. Ridges not noticeable in
(13:26):
the starlight, turned black in endless series, like flat topped
billows of a frozen ocean. Wide streaks of blue and
yellow followed as the sky dropped sheets of faint light
upon the wind eaten cliffs and showed their undersides. They
did not advance. They waited till the sun was up,
(13:47):
and then they moved. They rose and sank, They shifted
as the sunshine lifted them, and the shadows crept away.
But in an hour there would be no shadows any more.
There would be no shade. The little groups of stones
began to dance. It was horrible. The unbroken, huge expanse
(14:09):
lay round him, warming up twelve hours of blazing hell
to come. Already, the monstrous desert glared, each bit familiar,
since each bit was a repetition of the bit before.
Behind on either side. It laughed at guidance and direction.
He rose and walked for miles. He walked, though how
(14:32):
many north, south or west, he knew not The frantic
thing was in him now, the fury of the desert.
He took its pace, its endless, tireless stride, the stride
of the burning, murderous desert that is waterless. He felt
it alive, a blinding, heaving desire in it to reduce
(14:53):
him to its conditionless, awful dryness he felt, yet, knowing
this was feverish and not to be believed, that his own
small life lay on its mighty surface, a mere dot
in space, a mere heap of little stones, his emotions,
his fears, his hopes, his ambitions, his love, mere bundled
(15:14):
group of little, unimportant stones that danced with apparent activity
for a moment, then were merged in the undifferentiated surface underneath.
He was included in a purpose greater than his own.
The will made a plucky effort, then a night in
a day, He laughed, while his lips cracked smartingly with
(15:37):
the stretching of the skin. What is it? Many a
chap has lasted days and days? Yes, only he was
not of that rare company. He was ordinary, unaccustomed to privation, weak,
untrained of spirit, unacquainted with stern resistance. He knew not
how to spare himself. The desert struck him where it pleased,
(15:59):
all over, It played with him. His tongue was swollen,
the parched throat would not swallow. He sank an hour.
He lay there, just wit enough in him to choose
the top of a mound, where he could be most
easily seen. He lay two hours, three four hours. The
(16:19):
heat blazed down upon him like a furnace. The sky,
when he opened his eyes once was empty. Then a
speck became visible in the blue expanse, and presently another speck.
They came from nowhere. They hovered very high, almost out
of sight. They appeared, They disappeared, They reappeared, nearer and nearer.
(16:44):
They swung down in sweeping, stealthy circles, little dancing groups
of them, miles away, but ever drawing closer, the vultures.
He had strained his ears so long for sounds of
feet and voices, that it seems he could no longer
hear at all. Hearing had ceased within him. Then came
(17:06):
the water dreams, with their agonizing torture. He heard that,
heard it running in silvery streams and rivulets across green
English meadows. It rippled with silvery music. He heard it splash.
He dipped hands and feet and head in it. In deep,
clear pools of generous depth, he drank with his skin.
(17:29):
He drank not with mouth and throat alone. Ice clinked
in effvescent, sparkling water against a glass. He swam and plunged.
Water gushed freely over back and shoulders, gallons and gallons
of it, bathfuls, and to spare a flood of gushing,
crystal cool, life giving liquid. And then he stood in
(17:53):
a beech wood and felt the streaming deludes of delicious
summer rain upon his face. Heard it dripped luxuriantly upon
a million thirsty leaves. The wet trunk shone, the damp
moss spread its perfume, ferns waved heavily in the moist atmosphere.
He was soaked to the skin in it. A mountain
(18:15):
torrent fresh from fields of snow, foamed boiling past, and
the spray fell in a shower upon his cheeks and hair.
He dived head foremost ah. He was up to the neck,
and she was with him. They were under water together.
He saw her eyes gleaming into his own beneath the
(18:36):
copious flood. The voice, however, was not hers. You will drown,
yet you will not know you drown. His swollen tongue
called out a name, but no sound was audible. He
closed his eyes. There came sweet unconsciousness. A sound in
(18:57):
that instant was audible, though it was a voice, voices,
and the thud of animal hoofs upon the sand. The
specks had vanished from the sky as mysteriously as they came,
and as though in answer to the sound. He made
a movement, an automatic, unconscious movement. He did not know.
(19:17):
He moved, and the body, uncontrolled, lost its precarious balance.
He rolled, but he did not know. He rolled slowly
over the edge of the sloping mound of sand. He
turned sideways, like a log of wood. He slid gradually,
turning over and over, nothing to stop him to the
(19:39):
bottom a few feet only, and not even steep, just
steep enough to keep rolling slowly. There was a splash,
but he did not know there was a splash. They
found him in a pool of water, one of these
rare pools the desert Bedouins more orked preciously for their own.
(20:02):
He had lain within three yards of it for hours.
He was drowned, but he did not know he drowned.
End of story ten
Story ten of Day and Night Stories by Algernon Blackwood.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Story ten
by Water. The night before young Larson left to take
up his new appointment in Egypt, he went to the clairvoyant.
He neither believed nor disbelieved. He felt no interest, for
(00:20):
he already knew his past and did not wish to
know his future. Just to please me, Jim, the girl pleaded,
the woman is wonderful. Before I had been five minutes
with her, she told me your initials, so there must
be something in it. She read your thought. He smiled indulgently.
Even I can do that, But the girl was in earnest.
(00:42):
He yielded, and that night, at his farewell dinner, he
came to give his report of the interview. The result
was meager and unconvincing. Money was coming to him. He
was soon to make a voyage, and he would never marry.
So you see how silly it all is, he laughed,
for they were to be married when his first promotion came.
(01:06):
He gave the details, however, making a little story of
it in the way he knew she loved. But was
that all, Jim the Girl asked, it looking rather hard
into his face. Aren't you hiding something from me? He
hesitated a moment, then burst out laughing at her clever discernment.
There was a little more, he confessed, But you take
(01:28):
it all so seriously. I he had to tell it then.
Of course, the woman had told him a lot of
gibberish about friendly and unfriendly elements. She said, water was
unfriendly to me. I was to be careful of water,
or else I should come to harm by it. Fresh
water only, he hastened to add, seeing that the idea
(01:50):
of shipwreck was in her mind. Drowning, the girl asked quickly, Yes,
he admitted, with reluctance, but still laughing. She did, saying,
though drowning in no ordinary way. The girl's face showed
uneasiness a moment. What does that mean? Drowning in no
ordinary way? She asked, a catch in her breath, but
(02:13):
that he could not tell her because he did not
know himself. He gave, therefore the exact words, you will drown,
but will not know you drown. It was unwise of him,
he wished afterwards he had invented a happier report, or
had kept this detail back. I'm safe in Egypt. Anyhow,
(02:34):
he laughed, I shall be a clever man if I
can find enough water in the desert to do me harm.
And all the way from Trieste to Alexandria, he remembered
the promise she had extracted that he would never once
go on the Nile unless duty made it imperative for
him to do so. He kept that promise, Like the
literal faithful soul he was. His love was equal to
(02:58):
the somewhat quixotic Sciens sacrifice. It occasionally involved fresh water.
In Egypt there was practically none other, and in any case,
the Natrum works where his duty lay, had their headquarters
some distance out into the desert. The river, with its
banks of welcome, refreshing verdure, was not even visible. Months
(03:21):
passed quickly, and the time for leave came within measurable distance.
In the long interval, Luck had played the cards kindly
for him. Vacancies had occurred, early, promotion seemed likely, and
his letters were full of plans to bring her out
to share a little house of their own. His health, however,
had not improved. The dryness did not suit him. Even
(03:45):
in this short period. His blood had thinned, his nervous
system deteriorated, and contrary to the doctor's prophecy, the waterless
air had told upon his sleep a damp climate liked
him best, and once the sun had touched him with
its fiery finger. His letters made no mention of this.
(04:05):
He described the life to her, the work, the sport,
the pleasant people, and his chances of increased pay and
early marriage. And a week before he sailed, he rode out,
upon a final act of duty, to inspect the latest
diggings his company were making. His course lay some twenty
miles into the desert behind elk Chobak and towards the
(04:27):
limestone hills of Gubiel Haidi, and he went alone, carrying
lunch and tea, for it was the weekly holiday of
Friday and the men were not at work. The accident
was ordinary enough. On his way back, in the heat
of early afternoon, his pony stumbled against a boulder on
the treacherous desert, film threw him heavily, broke the girth,
(04:51):
bolted before he could seize the reins again, and left
him stranded some ten or twelve miles from home. There
was a pain in his life, his knee that made
walking difficult. A buzzing in his head that troubled sight
and made the landscape swim while worse than either his
provisions fastened to the saddle had vanished with the frightened
(05:13):
pony into those blazing leagues of sand. He was alone
in the desert, beneath the pitiless afternoon sun, twelve miles
of utterly exhausting country between him and safety. Under normal conditions,
he would have covered the distance in four hours, reaching
home by dark, but his knee pained him so that
(05:35):
a mile an hour proved the best he could possibly do.
He reflected a few minutes, the wisest course was to
sit down and wait till the pony told its obvious
story to the stable and help should come. And this
was what he did. For the scorching heat and glare
were dangerous, they were terrible. He was shaken and bewildered
(05:56):
by his fall, hungry and weak into the bargain, and
an hour's painful scrambling over the baked and burning little
gorges must have speedily caused complete prostration. He sat down
and rubbed his aching knee. It was quite a little adventure, yet,
though he knew the desert might not be lightly trifled with.
(06:18):
He felt at the moment nothing more than this, and
the amusing description of it he would give in his
letter or intoxicating thought by word of mouth. In the
heat of the sun, he began to feel drowsy. A
soft torquor crept over him. He dozed, He fell asleep.
It was a long, dreamless sleep, for when he woke
(06:41):
at length, the sun had just gone down. The dusk
lay awfully upon the enormous desert, and the air was chilly.
The cold had waked him quickly, as though on purpose.
The red glow faded from the sky, the first star shone.
It was dark, the heavens were deep violet. He looked
(07:02):
round and realized that his sense of direction had gone entirely.
Great hunger was in him. The cold already was bitter
as the wind rose, but the pain in his knee
having eased, He got up and walked a little, and
in a moment lost sight of the spot where he
had been lying. The shadowy desert swallowed it. Ah. He realized,
(07:25):
this is not an English field, or more, I'm in
the desert. The safe thing to do was to remain
exactly where he was. Only thus could the rescuers find him.
Once he wandered, he was done, for it was strange
the search party had not yet arrived. To keep warm, however,
he was compelled to move, so he made a little
(07:48):
pile of stones to mark the place, and walked round
and round it in a circle of some dozen yards diameter.
He limped badly, and the hunger gnawed dreadfully. But after
all the adventure was not so terrible. The amusing side
of it kept uppermost. Still. Though fragile in body, his
spirit was not unduly timid or imaginative. He could last
(08:12):
out the night, or, if the worst came to the worst,
the next day as well. But when he watched the
little group of stones, he saw that there were dozens
of them, scores, hundreds, thousands of these little groups of stones.
The desert's face, of course, is thickly strewn with them.
The original one was lost in the first five minutes,
(08:35):
so he sat down again, But the biting cold and
the wind that licked his very skin beneath the light
clothing soon forced him up again. It was ominous, and
the night huge and shelterless. The shaft of greens adiacal
light that hung so strangely in the western sky. For
hours had faded away. The stars were out in their
(08:59):
bright thousands. No guide was anywhere. The wind moaned and
puffed among the sandy mounds. The vast sheet of desert
stretched appallingly upon the world. He heard the jackal's cry,
and with the jackal's cry came suddenly the unwelcome realization
that no play was in this adventure anymore. But that
(09:22):
oblique reality stared at him through the surrounding darkness. He
faced it at bay. He was genuinely lost. Thought blocked
in him. I must be calm and think, he said aloud.
His voice woke no echo. It was small and dead.
Something gigantic aided Instantly He got up and walked again.
(09:45):
Why did no one come? Hours had passed the pony
had long ago found it stable, or had it run
madly in another direction? Altogether he worked out possibilities, lightening
his belt. The cold was searching. He never had been,
never could be warm again. The hot sunshine of a
(10:08):
few hours ago seemed the merest dream. Unfamiliar with hardship,
he knew not what to do, but he took his
coat and shirt off, vigorously rubbing his skin, where the
dried perspiration of the afternoon still caused clammy shivers. Swung
his arms furiously like a London cabman, and quickly dressed again.
(10:30):
Though the wind upon his bare back was fearful, he
felt warmer a little. He lay down, exhausted, sheltered by
an overhanging limestone crag, and took snatches of fitful dog
sleep while the wind drove over head and the dry
sand pricked his skin. One face continually was near him,
(10:52):
one pair of tender eyes, two dear hands smoothed him.
He smelt the perfume of light brown hair. It was
all natural enough. His whole thought, in his misery, ran
to her in England, England, where there were soft fresh grass,
big sheltering trees, hemlock and honeysuckle in the hedges, while
(11:14):
the hard black desert guarded him, and consciousness dipped away
at little intervals under this dry and pitiless Egyptian sky.
It was perhaps five in the morning when a voice spoke,
and he started up with a horrid jerk, the voice
of that clairvoyant woman. The sentence died away into the darkness,
(11:37):
but one word remained. Water At first, he wondered, but
at once explanation came. Cause and effect were obvious. The
clew was physical. His body needed water, and so the
thought came up into his mind. He was thirsty. This
was the moment when fear first really touched him. Hunger
(11:59):
was mannagedible more or less for a day or two, certainly,
but thirst, thirst, and the desert were an evil pair that,
by cumulative suggestion gathering since childhood days, brought terror in.
Once in the mind, it could not be dislodged. In
spite of his best efforts, the ghastly thing grew passionately
(12:22):
because his thirst grew too. He had smoked much, had
eaten spiced things at lunch, had breathed in alkali. With
the dry, scorched air. He searched for a cool flint
pebble to put into his burning mouth, but found only
angular scraps of dusty limestone. There were no pebbles here.
(12:43):
The cold helped a little to counteract, but already he
knew in himself, subconsciously, the dread of something that was coming.
What was it? He tried to hide the thought and
bury it out of sight. The utter futility of his
tiny strength against the power of the universe appalled him,
and then he knew the merciless sun was on the way,
(13:05):
already rising. Its return was like the presage of execution
to him. It came with true horror. He watched the marvelous,
swift dawn break over the Sandy Sea. The eastern sky
glowed hurriedly as from crimsoned fires. Ridges not noticeable in
(13:26):
the starlight, turned black in endless series, like flat topped
billows of a frozen ocean. Wide streaks of blue and
yellow followed as the sky dropped sheets of faint light
upon the wind eaten cliffs and showed their undersides. They
did not advance. They waited till the sun was up,
(13:47):
and then they moved. They rose and sank, They shifted
as the sunshine lifted them, and the shadows crept away.
But in an hour there would be no shadows any more.
There would be no shade. The little groups of stones
began to dance. It was horrible. The unbroken, huge expanse
(14:09):
lay round him, warming up twelve hours of blazing hell
to come. Already, the monstrous desert glared, each bit familiar,
since each bit was a repetition of the bit before.
Behind on either side. It laughed at guidance and direction.
He rose and walked for miles. He walked, though how
(14:32):
many north, south or west, he knew not The frantic
thing was in him now, the fury of the desert.
He took its pace, its endless, tireless stride, the stride
of the burning, murderous desert that is waterless. He felt
it alive, a blinding, heaving desire in it to reduce
(14:53):
him to its conditionless, awful dryness he felt, yet, knowing
this was feverish and not to be believed, that his own
small life lay on its mighty surface, a mere dot
in space, a mere heap of little stones, his emotions,
his fears, his hopes, his ambitions, his love, mere bundled
(15:14):
group of little, unimportant stones that danced with apparent activity
for a moment, then were merged in the undifferentiated surface underneath.
He was included in a purpose greater than his own.
The will made a plucky effort, then a night in
a day, He laughed, while his lips cracked smartingly with
(15:37):
the stretching of the skin. What is it? Many a
chap has lasted days and days? Yes, only he was
not of that rare company. He was ordinary, unaccustomed to privation, weak,
untrained of spirit, unacquainted with stern resistance. He knew not
how to spare himself. The desert struck him where it pleased,
(15:59):
all over, It played with him. His tongue was swollen,
the parched throat would not swallow. He sank an hour.
He lay there, just wit enough in him to choose
the top of a mound, where he could be most
easily seen. He lay two hours, three four hours. The
(16:19):
heat blazed down upon him like a furnace. The sky,
when he opened his eyes once was empty. Then a
speck became visible in the blue expanse, and presently another speck.
They came from nowhere. They hovered very high, almost out
of sight. They appeared, They disappeared, They reappeared, nearer and nearer.
(16:44):
They swung down in sweeping, stealthy circles, little dancing groups
of them, miles away, but ever drawing closer, the vultures.
He had strained his ears so long for sounds of
feet and voices, that it seems he could no longer
hear at all. Hearing had ceased within him. Then came
(17:06):
the water dreams, with their agonizing torture. He heard that,
heard it running in silvery streams and rivulets across green
English meadows. It rippled with silvery music. He heard it splash.
He dipped hands and feet and head in it. In deep,
clear pools of generous depth, he drank with his skin.
(17:29):
He drank not with mouth and throat alone. Ice clinked
in effvescent, sparkling water against a glass. He swam and plunged.
Water gushed freely over back and shoulders, gallons and gallons
of it, bathfuls, and to spare a flood of gushing,
crystal cool, life giving liquid. And then he stood in
(17:53):
a beech wood and felt the streaming deludes of delicious
summer rain upon his face. Heard it dripped luxuriantly upon
a million thirsty leaves. The wet trunk shone, the damp
moss spread its perfume, ferns waved heavily in the moist atmosphere.
He was soaked to the skin in it. A mountain
(18:15):
torrent fresh from fields of snow, foamed boiling past, and
the spray fell in a shower upon his cheeks and hair.
He dived head foremost ah. He was up to the neck,
and she was with him. They were under water together.
He saw her eyes gleaming into his own beneath the
(18:36):
copious flood. The voice, however, was not hers. You will drown,
yet you will not know you drown. His swollen tongue
called out a name, but no sound was audible. He
closed his eyes. There came sweet unconsciousness. A sound in
(18:57):
that instant was audible, though it was a voice, voices,
and the thud of animal hoofs upon the sand. The
specks had vanished from the sky as mysteriously as they came,
and as though in answer to the sound. He made
a movement, an automatic, unconscious movement. He did not know.
(19:17):
He moved, and the body, uncontrolled, lost its precarious balance.
He rolled, but he did not know. He rolled slowly
over the edge of the sloping mound of sand. He
turned sideways, like a log of wood. He slid gradually,
turning over and over, nothing to stop him to the
(19:39):
bottom a few feet only, and not even steep, just
steep enough to keep rolling slowly. There was a splash,
but he did not know there was a splash. They
found him in a pool of water, one of these
rare pools the desert Bedouins more orked preciously for their own.
(20:02):
He had lain within three yards of it for hours.
He was drowned, but he did not know he drowned.
End of story ten
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