During the night none of them kept awake; yet none
could be precisely said to have slept. On the morrow
there remained only half a pint of water, and this the
doctor put away, all three having resolved not to touch it
until the last extremity.
It was not long, however, before Joe exclaimed:
"I'm choking, and the heat is getting worse! I'm
not surprised at that, though," he added, consulting the
thermometer; "one hundred and forty degrees!"
"The sand scorches me," said the hunter, "as though
it had just come out of a furnace; and not a cloud in this
sky of fire. It's enough to drive one mad!"
"Let us not despair," responded the doctor. "In this
latitude these intense heats are invariably followed by
storms, and the latter come with the suddenness of lightning.
Notwithstanding this disheartening clearness of
the sky, great atmospheric changes may take place in less
than an hour."
"But," asked Kennedy, "is there any sign whatever
of that?"
"Well," replied the doctor, "I think that there is
some slight symptom of a fall in the barometer."
"May Heaven hearken to you, Samuel! for here we are
pinned to the ground, like a bird with broken wings."
"With this difference, however, my dear Dick, that
our wings are unhurt, and I hope that we shall be able to
use them again.
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