Prisoners Of The Sand (1)

first of six

A man can go nineteen hours without water, and what have we drunk since last night? A few drops of dew at dawn. But the northeast wind is still blowing, still slowing up the process of our evaporation. To it, also, we owe the continued accumulation of high clouds. If only they would drift straight overhead and break into rain! But it never rains in the desert.
"Look here, Prevot. let's rip up one of the parachutes and spread the sections out on the ground, weighed down with stones. If the wind stays in the same quarted till morning, they'll catch the dew and we can wring them into one of the tanks."
We spread six triangular sections of parachute under the stars, and Prevot unhooked a fuel tank. This was as much as we could do for ourselves till dawn. But, miracle of miracles! Prevot had come upon an orange while working over the tank. We share it, and though it was little enough to men who could have used a few gallons of sweet water, still I was overcome with relief.ondemned to death," I said to myself, "and still the certainty of dying cannot compare with the pleasure I am feeling. The joy I take from this half of an orange which i am holding in my hand is one of the greatest joys i have ever known."
I lay flat on my back, sucking my orange and counting the shooting stars. Here I was, for one minute infinitely happy. "Nobody can know anything of the world in which the individual moves and has being," I reflected. "There is no guessing it. Only the man locked up in it can know what it is."
For the first time I understood the cigarette and glass of rum that are handed to the criminal about to be executed. I used to think for a man to accept these wretched gifts at the foot of the gallows was beneath human dignity. Now I was learning that he took pleasure from them. People thought him courageous when he smiled as he smoked or drank. I knew now that he smiled because the taste gave him pleasure. People could not see that his perspective had changed, and that for him the last hour of his life was a life in itself.
We collected an enormous quantity of water--perhaps as much as two quarts. Never again would we be thirsty! We were saved; we had a liquid to drink!
I dipped my tin cup into the tank and brought up a beautifully yellow-green liquid the first mouthful of which nauseated me so that despite my thirst I had to catch my breath before swallowing it. I would have swallowed mud, I swear; but this taste of poisonous metal cut keener than thirst.
I glanced at Prevot and saw him going round and round with his eyes fixed to the ground as if looking for something. Suddenly he leaned forward and began to vomit without interrupting his spinning. Half a minute later it was my turn. I was seized by such convulsions that i went down on my knees and dug my fingers into the sand while i puked. Neither of us spoke, and for a quarter of an hour we reamined thus shaken, bringing up nothing but a little bile.
After a time it passed and all I felt was a vague, distant nausea. But our last hope had fled. Whether our bad luck was due to a sizing on the parachute or to the magnesium lining of the tank, I never found out. Certain it was that we needed either another set of cloths or another receptacle.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (from "Wind, Sand and Stars")

Hermit Canyon (top)
Boucher Canyon (middle)
Cremation Canyon (below)