We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst… of thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself on his elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered an oasis!
Yes, far in the distance was an oasis… an oasis with limpid water, which reflected the iron trees!… Tush, it was the scene of the mirage… I recognized it at once… the worst of the three!… No one had been able to fight against it… no one… I did my utmost to keep my head AND NOT TO HOPE FOR WATER, because I knew that, if a man hoped for water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after hoping for water, he struck against the mirror, then there was only one thing for him to do: to hang himself on the iron tree!
So I cried to M. de Chagny:
"It’s the mirage!… It’s the mirage!… Don’t believe in the water! … It’s another trick of the mirrors!…"
Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors, my springs, my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions! He angrily declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that water flowing over there, among those splendid, numberless trees, was not real water!… And the desert was real!… And so was the forest!… And it was no use trying to take him in… he was an old, experienced traveler… he had been all over the place!
And he dragged himself along, saying: "Water! Water!"
And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking.
And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking.
For we not only saw the water, but WE HEARD IT!… We heard it flow, we heard it ripple!… Do you understand that word "ripple?"… IT IS A SOUND WHICH YOU HEAR WITH YOUR TONGUE!… You put your tongue out of your mouth to listen to it better!
Lastly—and this was the most pitiless torture of all—we heard the rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention… Oh, I knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a very long and narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these projections and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm.
Ah, you should have seen us putting out our tongues and dragging ourselves toward the rippling river–bank! Our eyes and ears were full of water, but our tongues were hard and dry as horn!
When we reached the mirror, M. de Chagny licked it… and I also licked the glass.
It was burning hot!
Then we rolled on the floor with a hoarse cry of despair. M. de Chagny put the one pistol that was still loaded to his temple; and I stared at the Punjab lasso at the foot of the iron tree. I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene!… The iron tree was waiting for me!…
But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide. I took his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him… and then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen.
I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a black–headed nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail… I lifted a radiant face to M. de Chagny… The black–headed nail yielded to my pressure…
And then…
And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar–flap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trap–door. What could there be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water to drink?
I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone… a staircase… a dark staircase leading into the cellar. The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a new trick of the monster’s, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and went down first.
The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness. But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs? The lake could not be far away.
We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us… circular shapes… on which I turned the light of my lantern.
Barrels!
