Algernon Blackwood

“ 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—all over. It played with him. His tongue was swollen; the parched throat could 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 did not know 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 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 Bedouin mark preciously for their own. ”

“ 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 could have covered the distance in four hours, reaching home by dark; but his knee pained him so that 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 ”

“ 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 realised, “this is not an English field or moor. I’m in the Desert!” The safe thing to do was to remain exactly where he was ”

“ He wished afterwards he had invented a happier report, or had kept this detail back. “I’m safe in Egypt, anyhow,” he laughed. “I shall be a clever man if I can find enough water in the desert to do me harm!” ”

“ His love was equal to the somewhat quixotic 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. ”