Maiden Voyages by Mary Morris

Author:Mary Morris [Morris, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76647-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

Without water the desert is nothing but a grave, and is useless either as a dwelling-place or even as a high-road for the living. If the traveller’s food is poor he will go hungry, if his road is long he will be weary, if his lot is hard he will be lonely, but to all these things he can become inured. No one, however, can be inured to thirst. When the craving for water assails a man he will forget all else in his frantic search for it, knowing that life itself depends on finding it, and that failing it he will soon be the victim of delirium, madness and death.

When a traveller first starts out to cross the desert he is inclined to take water for granted, and though the old innkeepers warn everyone to carry it, he may refuse to listen and prefer taking a risk to being burdened with a water-bottle, but once that man has experienced the torture of thirst his outlook is changed, and nothing will induce him to start upon any stage without a supply.

As the long hours pass, the burning sun seems to sap the moisture through every pore of the skin, until thirst is not only felt in the dry throat and cracked lips, but throughout the body, and as the days of rationed water go by, the whole system, tormented by a craving which becomes more and more urgent, calls out for the sight, the smell and the feeling of moisture. Sometimes the sunset hour brings a caravan to a lonely spot where a water-hole should be found but is hard to detect. All members of the caravan dismount and hunt for the small depression, perhaps marked only by a stone. It is so easy to miss, and once darkness has fallen it would be impossible to locate it. Then a shout is heard, “Water, water!” and all run to the spot to quench their desperate thirst.

The mirage has been a decoy to many thirsty men. I myself, when I first saw a lovely lake with trees standing on its farther bank in mid-Gobi, urged the drivers to push on and reach it quickly, but the bash only smiled and spoke indulgently, as one might speak to an ignorant child: “That’s not water,” he said, “that’s glitter sand—dry water.” That lake was but a mirage, and the farther we went the farther it receded, tantalising our thirst with its falsity.

I was caught by another deception to which weary wayfarers are subject, and this time it was not “glitter sand” but the brackish water of the salt desert. The sparkle of the limpid spring was irresistible, but when I ran toward it, certain this time of the water’s reality, the same gruff voice cautioned me: “Drink as little of that water as you can,” it said. This time I cared for none of his warnings, for I had found real water and would enjoy it to the full. I soon learnt that the bash knew better than I, for the more I took of this water, the more parched I became.

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