For a moment we stood and stared at each other, and strange spectacles we were.

“Is he dead?” muttered Orme, pointing to the still buried Higgs.

“Fear so,” I answered, “but we’ll look;” and painfully we began to disinter him.

When we came to it beneath the lion-skin, the Professor’s face was black and hideous to see, but, to our relief, we perceived that he was not dead, for he moved his hand and moaned.  Orme looked at me.

“Water would save him,” I said.

Then came the anxious moment.  One of our water-bottles was emptied before the storm began, but the other, a large, patent flask covered with felt, and having a screw vulcanite top, should still contain a good quantity, perhaps three quarts—­that is, if the fluid had not evaporated in the dreadful heat.  If this had happened, it meant that Higgs would die, and unless help came, that soon we should follow him.  Orme unscrewed the flask, for my hands refused that office, and used his teeth to draw the cork, which, providentially enough the thoughtful Quick had set in the neck beneath the screw.  Some of the water, which, although it was quite hot, had not evaporated, thank God! flew against his parched lips, and I saw him bite them till the blood came in the fierceness of the temptation to assuage his raging thirst.  But he resisted it like the man he is, and, without drinking a drop, handed me the bottle, saying simply: 

“You are the oldest; take care of this, Adams.”

Now it was my turn to be tempted, but I, too, overcame, and, sitting down, laid Higgs’s head upon my knee; then, drop by drop, let a little of the water trickle between his swollen lips.

The effect was magical, for in less than a minute the Professor sat up, grasped at the flask with both hands, and strove to tear it away.

“You cruel brute!  You cruel selfish brute!” he moaned as I wrenched it from him.

“Look here, Higgs,” I answered thickly; “Orme and I want water badly enough, and we have had none.  But you might take it all if it would save you, only it wouldn’t.  We are lost in the desert, and must be sparing.  If you drank everything now, in a few hours you would be thirsty again and die.”

He thought awhile, then looked up and said: 

“Beg pardon—­I understand.  I’m the selfish brute.  But there’s a good lot of water there; let’s each have a drink; we can’t move unless we do.”

So we drank, measuring out the water in a little india-rubber cup which we had with us.  It held about as much as a port wine glass, and each of us drank, or rather slowly sipped, three cupfuls; we who felt as though we could have swallowed a gallon apiece, and asked for more.  Small as was the allowance, it worked wonders in us; we were men again.