The emotions of
the day had left sad impressions on their minds.
Toward morning, the sky had resumed its brilliant
purity and its heat. The balloon ascended, and, after
several ineffectual attempts, fell into a current that,
although not rapid, bore them toward the northwest.
"We are not making progress," said the doctor. "If
I am not mistaken, we have accomplished nearly half of
our journey in ten days; but, at the rate at which we are
going, it would take months to end it; and that is all the
more vexatious, that we are threatened with a lack of
water."
"But we'll find some," said Joe. "It is not to be
thought of that we shouldn't discover some river, some
stream, or pond, in all this vast extent of country."
"I hope so."
"Now don't you think that it's Joe's cargo of stone
that is keeping us back?"
Kennedy asked this question only to tease Joe; and
he did so the more willingly because he had, for a moment,
shared the poor lad's hallucinations; but, not finding any
thing in them, he had fallen back into the attitude of a
strong-minded looker-on, and turned the affair off with a
laugh.
Joe cast a mournful glance at him; but the doctor
made no reply. He was thinking, not without secret terror,
probably, of the vast solitudes of Sahara--for there
whole weeks sometimes pass without the caravans meeting
with a single spring of water.
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