I did not sleep, I did not rest, I did not breathe nor live a human; I only existed as a living pain, the conception of pain realized into a conscious nucleus,--and so the night passed. Again the sun arose, and with the light of her first ray I saw near at hand a caravan, camels, men, horses, a great cavalcade. They approached rapidly and surrounded me. The leader of the band alighted and raised me to my feet, for no longer had I the power of motion. He spoke to me kindly, and strange as it may seem to you, but not at all strange did it seem to me, called me by name.
"We came across your tracks in the desert," he said; "we are your deliverers."
Then from one of the skins that hung across the hump of a camel he filled a crystal goblet with sparkling water, and held it towards me, but just before the goblet touched my lips he withdrew it and said:
"I forgot to first extend the greetings of our people."
And then I noticed in his other hand a tiny glass containing a green liquid, which he placed to my lips, pronouncing the single word, "Drink."
I fastened my gaze upon the water, and opened my lips. I smelled the aroma of the powerful narcotic liquid within the glass, and hastened to obey, but glanced first at my deliverer, and in his stead saw the familiar face of the satanic figure that twice before had tempted me. Instantly, without a thought as to the consequences, without a fear as to the result, I dashed the glass to the sand, and my voice returning, I cried for the third time, "No; I will not drink."
The troop of camels instantly disappeared, as had the figures in the scenes before, the tempter resolved into clear air, the sand beneath my feet became natural again, and I became myself as I had been before passing through the hideous ordeal. The fact of my deliverance from the earth caverns had, I now realized, been followed by temporary aberration of my mind, but at last I saw clearly again, the painful fancy had passed, the delirium was over.
I fell upon my knees in thankfulness; the misery through which I had passed had proven to be illusory, the earth caverns were beneath me, the mirage and temptations were not real, the horrors I had experienced were imaginary--thank God for all this--and that the sand was really sand. Solitary, alone, I kneeled in the desert barren, from horizon to horizon desolation only surrounded, and yet the scene of that illimitable waste, a fearful reality, it is true, was sweet in comparison with the misery of body and soul about which I had dreamed so vividly.