The Eight-Year-Old Legend Book by Isabel Wyatt

Author:Isabel Wyatt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Floris Books
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

It was hot in the sun. But still the men dug. They dug down and down in the hot sand under the patch of grass. At last a spade rang on rock.

Still they dug till they laid the rock bare. It was long; it was wide. If water slept below, this shelf of rock cut them off from it.

“So near, and yet so far!” cried the men. “What good to go on? How can we dig up a bed of rock?”

And back they went to the camp, each bent to his spade as an old man bends to his staff. They lay down in the shade of the tent-roof in despair.

But the boy did not go with them. He crept down to the bed of rock. He lay flat on it. He put his ear to it and thought, “I am sure I can hear water!”

Then he saw a line that ran along the face of the rock.

“That will be its weak spot,” said the boy. “If the rock will crack at all, it will be along this rift.”

He took up his spade, and stuck its edge into the rift to act as a wedge. Then he ran back in the noonday heat to the camp.

The ox-carts had a sledgehammer to drive in pegs when the tent-roof was put up. The boy found the sledgehammer. Back to the rock he went with it, and struck a hard blow at the spade that was his wedge.

The rock split along the cleft. Out of that split, a jet of water shot up, as tall as a palm tree.

At the boy’s shout, his father got up to look. He told the rest of the men. Out of the camp they all ran, full of joy, to drink and to bathe.

Then back to the camp they went, light of heart and light of step. They lit a fire with the wood the boy had found. They took water from the new spring to cook rice. They ate. They gave the oxen food and water. They gave thanks.

They set up a flag to mark the new spring. And at nightfall they set out again. This time the sand-pilot did not sleep, but kept his eyes on the stars. And at dawn they came out of the Great Desert into a land of grass and trees.

The boy grew up to be a sand-pilot, like his father. And each time he led a caravan across the Great Desert, and the ox-carts stood in a ring by the spring, the men said, “Tell us how you found this spring, O Boy Who Found Water.”

For all his life, even when he grew old, he kept the name of the Boy Who Found Water.

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