Prisoners Of The Sand (6)

sixth of six

I swear to you that something is about to happen. I swear that life has sprung in this desert. I swear that this emptiness, this stillness, has suddenly become more stirring than a tumult on a public square.
"Prevot! Footprints! We are saved!"
We had wandered from the trail of human species; we had cast ourselves forth from the tribe; we had found ourselves alone on earth and forgotten by the universal migration; and here, imprinted in the sand, were the divine and naked feet of man!
"Look, Prevot, here two men stood together and then separated."
"Here a camel knelt."
"Here..."
But it was not true that we were already saved. It was not enough to squat down and wait. Before long we should be past saving. Once the cough has begun, the progress made by thirst is swift.
Still, I believed in that caravan swaying somewhere in the desert, heavy with its cargo of treasure.
We went on. Suddenly I heard a cock crow. I remembered what Guillaumet had told me: "Towards the end I heard cocks crowing in the Andes. And I heard the railway train." The instant the cock crowed I thought of Guillaumet and said to myself: "First it was my eyes that played tricks on me. I suppose this is another of the effects of thirst. Probably my ears have merely held out longer than my eyes." But Prevot grabbed my arm.
"Did you hear that?"
"What?"
"The cock."
"Why...why, yes, I did."
To myself I said: "Fool, get it through your head! This means life!"
I had one last hallucination--three dogs chasing one another. Prevot looked, but could not see them. However, both of us waved our arms at a Bedouin. Both of us shouted with all the breath in our bodies, and laughed for happiness.
But our voices could not carry thirty yards. The Bedouin on his slow-moving camel had come into view from behind a dune and now he was moving slowly out of sight. The man was probably the only Arab in this desert, sent by a demon to materialize and vanish before the eyes of us who could not run.
We saw in profile on the dune another Arab. We shouted, but our shouts were whispers. We waved our arms and it seemed to us that they must fill the sky with monstrous signals. Still the Bedouin stared with averted face away from us.
At last, slowly, slowly he began a right-angle turn in our direction. At the very second when he became face to face with us, I thought, the curtain would come down. At the very second when his eyes met ours, thirst would vanish and by this man would death and the mirages be wiped out. Let this man make but a quarter-turn left and the world is changed. Let him but bring his torso round, sweep the scene with a glance, and like a god he can create life.
The miracle had come to pass. He was walking toward us over the sand like a god over the waves.
The Arab looked at us without a word. He placed his hands on our shoulders and we obeyed him: we stretched out upon the sand. Race, language, religion were forgotten. There was only this humble nomad with the hands of an archangel on our shoulders.
Face to the sand, we waited. And when the water came, we drank like calves with our faces in the basin, and with a greediness which alarmed the Bedouin so that from time to time he pulled us up. But as soon as his hand fell away from us we plunged our faces anew into the water.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (from "Wind, Sand and Stars")

Coconino sandstone, South Kaibab Trail (top)
between Hance and Mineral Canyon (middle)
moonrise over Manzanita Canyon (below)