Survivor: The Autobiography Part 14

At times there was despair in his exclamations and his laboured breathing. Even more pathetic was the voice of faith, when he suddenly called out in Basque the Psalmist's words: 'Lord, from the depths I cry to Thee!'

His journey had begun at 1 a.m. At 4 o'clock the nose of the container touched the underside of the balcony where Lepineux and Rossini stood waiting. It had taken three hours to climb 257 feet.

Bidegain shall now resume his story.

'My next job was to steer the coffin past the edge of this platform. The girder, leaning to my left, showed me what I must do. Thrusting all my weight on to the right guy-wire, I dragged the girder into position.

'"Up!" shouted Rossini into the telephone, and the container rose accordingly. The pitons were bending, and I wondered would they hold. At long last, however, my burden rested on the balcony: I had made it! Then I collapsed, exhausted but triumphant.'

Yes, he had brought the container so far; but at what cost! The next stage of the journey must soon begin the most difficult of all, for from this point to the surface the great shaft is a ma.s.s of points and blades of rock.

Before the convoy could set out on the last length of its ascent, we had to bring Mauer up. He was still at 699, and I must confess that during the excitement of the last few hours he had been well-nigh forgotten. Levi shouted to him, but there was no reply. It was a dreadful moment.

'h.e.l.lo, 257! Try to contact Mauer; he's not answering.'

Still there was no sound. Poor fellow, he had endured so long beneath those icy, pitiless cascades (against which he had unwisely failed to provide himself with waterproof clothing), that he was now half dead with cold. Bolted to the wall on a narrow ledge, he was in a state of prostration and practically unconscious. Aroused at length from his torpor, he was warned that the cable was on its way to pick him up; but it was repeatedly entangled or otherwise delayed, and took a very long time to reach him. Meanwhile, he suffered a relapse. Utterly exhausted and on the verge of desperation, he scarcely answered Levi's frantic calls . . . Eventually, however, at 7 a.m. he informed us that he had closed his snap-hook on the cable and was ready to start. He was helped out of the shaft at 8.30 in a pitiful condition; but he had reached the bottom of the chasm, and held on through thick and thin.

Rossini came to the surface at 9 o'clock. Worn out, drenched to the skin, and numb with cold, he was a.s.sisted to his tent through a curtain of alternate rain and snow.

Apart from Brosset and Ballandraux (with whom for the moment we were not concerned, for they had turned in and were fast asleep in the Salle Lepineux) only two men remained in the shaft Bidegain and Lepineux.

They were at 257, with the container tied down on the balcony; and there at about 9 a.m. a most extraordinary scene was enacted. These two bosom friends were heard over the telephone in acrimonious dispute. Lepineux was of opinion that Bidegain had done more than his fair share and was in no condition to proceed. He wanted to take Jose's place and escort the container with the hoist. Bidegain protested that he was perfectly fit, and that in any case no one but himself knew how to handle the apparatus. Jose won the day. Lepineux agreed to be hauled up. His face bore the marks of extreme weariness, cold, and nervous tension.

The rest is briefly told; Bidegain completed the terrible ascent, locked in combat with his tragic burden; but the difficulties appeared to increase in proportion as his endurance ebbed away. The container was repeatedly held up by one obstacle after another.

'Up a yard! . . . Stop!' he would say into the microphone.

'Another yard! . . . Stop!'

'Down a yard! . . . Stop! . . .'

And so it went on, Jose striving desperately to release the coffin, steering it with his body while he worked the hoist. His hands were bleeding; he was in dreadful pain; but he moved like an automaton rising yard by yard, foot by foot, through that last stretch of calvary. Another would have given in; Bidegain fought on to the bitter end. Immediately he reached the surface he collapsed. It was 2 p.m. Twenty hours had elapsed since the coffin started on its journey, and Bidegain had done battle with it for thirteen of those hours.

French naval officer, underwater explorer and film-maker. The inventor of the aqualung, Cousteau used the apparatus to explore, in 1946, the mysterious inland water cave of the Fountain of Vaucluse, near Avignon.

Our worst experience in five thousand dives befell us not in the sea but in an inland water-cave, the famous Fountain of Vaucluse near Avignon. The renowned spring is a quiet pool, a crater under a six-hundred-foot limestone cliff above the river Sorgue. A trickle flows from it the year round, until March comes when the Fountain of Vaucluse erupts in a rage of water which swells the Sorgue to a flood. It pumps furiously for five weeks then subsides. The phenomenon has occurred every year in recorded history.

The fountain has evoked the fancy of poets since the Middle Ages. Petrarch wrote sonnets to Laura by the Fountain of Vaucluse in the fourteenth century. Frederic Mistral, a Provenal poet, was another admirer of the spring. Generations of hydrologists have leaned over the fountain, evolving dozens of theories. They have measured the rainfall on the plateau above, mapped the potholes in it, a.n.a.lysed the water, and determined that it is invariably 55 Fahrenheit all the year round. But no one knew what happened to discharge the amazing flood.

One principle of intermittent natural fountains is that of an underground syphon, which taps a pool of water lying higher inside the hill than the water level of the surface pool. Simple overflows of the inner pool by heavy rain seeping through the porous limestone did not explain Vaucluse, because it did not entirely respond to rainfall. There was either a huge inner reservoir or a series of inner caverns and a system of syphons. Scientific theories had no more validity than Mistral's explanation: 'One day the fairy of the fountain changed herself into a beautiful maiden and took an old strolling minstrel by the hand and led him down through Vaucluse's waters to an underground prairie, where seven huge diamonds plugged seven holes. "See these diamonds?" said the fairy. "When I lift the seventh, the fountain rises to the roots of the fig tree that drinks only once a year."' Mistral's theory, as a matter of fact, possessed one more piece of tangible evidence than the scientific guesses. There is a rachitic hundred-year-old fig tree hooked on the vertical wall at the waterline of the annual flood. Its roots are watered but once a year.

A retired army officer, Commandant Brunet, who had settled in the nearby village of Apt, became an addict of the Fountain as had Petrarch six hundred years before. The Commandant suggested that the Undersea Research Group dive into the Fountain and learn the secret of the mechanism. In 1946 the Navy gave us permission to try. We journeyed to Vaucluse on 24 August, when the spring was quiescent. There seemed to be no point in entering a violent flood if its source might be discovered when the Fountain was quiet.

The arrival of uniformed naval officers and sailors in trucks loaded with diving equipment started a commotion in Vaucluse. We were overwhelmed by boys, vying for the privilege of carrying our air cylinders, portable decompression chamber, aqualungs, and diving dresses, up the wooded trail to the Fountain. Half the town, led by Mayor Garcin, stopped work and accompanied us. They told us about the formidable dive into the Fountain by Senor Negri in 1936. He seemed to have been a remarkably bold type, for we were informed that he had descended in a diving suit with a microphone inside the helmet through which he broadcast a running account of his incredible rigours as he plunged one hundred and twenty feet to the lower elbow of the siphon. Our friends of Vaucluse recalled with a thrill the dramatic moment when the voice from the depths announced that Senor Negri had found Ottonelli's zinc boat!

We already knew about Negri and Ottonelli, the two men who had preceded us into the Fountain, Ottonelli in 1878. We greatly admired Ottonelli's dive in the primitive equipment of his era. We were somewhat mystified by Senor Negri, a Ma.r.s.eille salvage contractor, who had avoided seeing us on several occasions when we sought first-hand information on the topography of the Fountain. We had read his diving report, but we felt deprived of the details he might have given us personally.

The helmet divers described certain features to be found in the Fountain. Ottonelli's report stated that he had alighted on the bottom of a basin forty-five feet down and reached a depth of ninety feet in a sloping tunnel under a huge triangular stone. During the dive his zinc boat had capsized in the pool and slid down through the shaft. Negri said he had gone to one hundred and twenty feet, to the elbow of a syphon leading uphill, and found the zinc boat. The corrosion-proof metal had, of course, survived sixty years immersion. Negri reported he could proceed no further because his air pipe was dragging against a great boulder, precariously balanced on a pivot. The slightest move might have toppled the rock and pinned him down to a gruesome death.

We had predicated our tactical planning on the physical features described by the pioneer divers. Dumas and I were to form the first cordee we used the mountain climber's term because we were to be tied together by a thirty-foot cord attached to our belts. Negri's measurements determined the length of our guide rope four hundred feet and the weights we carried on our belts, which were unusually heavy to allow us to penetrate the tunnel he had described and to plant ourselves against currents inside the syphon.

What we could not know until we had gone inside the Fountain was that Negri was over-imaginative. The topography of the cavern was completely unlike his description. Senor Negri's dramatic broadcast was probably delivered just out of sight of the watchers, about fifty feet down. Dumas and I all but gave our lives to learn that Ottonelli's boat never existed. That misinformation was not the only burden we carried into the Fountain: the new air compressor with which we filled the breathing cylinders had prepared a fantastic fate for us.

We adjusted our eyes to the gloom of the crater. Monsieur Garcin had lent us a Canadian canoe, which was floated over the throat of the Fountain, to anchor the guide rope. There was a heavy pig-iron weight on the end of the rope, which we wanted lowered beforehand as far as it would go down. The underwater entry was partially blocked by a huge stone b.u.t.tress, but we managed to lower the pig-iron fifty-five feet. Chief Petty Officer Jean Pinard volunteered to dive without a protective suit to attempt to roll the pig-iron down as far as it was possible. Pinard returned lobster-red with cold and reported he had shoved the weight down to ninety feet. He did not suspect that he had been down further than Negri.

I donned my constant-volume diving dress over long woollens under the eyes of an appreciative audience perched round the rocky lip of the crater. My wife was among them, not liking this venture at all. Dumas wore an Italian Navy frogman outfit. We were loaded like donkeys. Each wore a three-cylinder lung, rubber foot fins, a heavy dagger, and two large waterproof flashlights, one in hand and one on the belt. Over my left arm was coiled three hundred feet of line in three pieces. Dumas carried an emergency micro-aqualung on his belt, a depth gauge, and a piolet, the alpinist's ice-axe. There were rock slopes to be negotiated: with our heavy ballast we might need the piolet.

The surface commander was the late Lieutenant Maurice Fargues, our resourceful equipment officer. He was to keep his hand on the guide line as we transported the pig-iron down with us. The guide rope was our only communication with the surface. We had memorized a signal code. One tug from below requested Fargues to tighten the rope to clear snags. Three tugs meant pay out more line. Six tugs was the emergency signal for Fargues to haul us up as quickly as possible.

When the cordee reached Negri's syphon, we planned to station the pig-iron, and attach to it one of the lengths of rope I carried over my arm. As we climbed on into the syphon, I would unreel this line behind me. We believed that our goal would be found past Negri's see-sawing rock, up a long sloping arm of the syphon, in an air cave, where in some manner unknown Vaucluse's annual eruption was launched.

Embarra.s.sed by the wealth of gadgets we had hanging on to us, and needing our comrades' support, we waded into the pool. We looked around for the last time. I saw the rea.s.suring silhouette of Fargues and the crowd round the amphitheatre. In their forefront was a young abbe, who had no doubt come to be of service in a certain eventuality.

As we submerged, the water liberated us from weight. We stayed motionless in the pool for a minute to test our ballast and communications system. Under my flexible helmet I had a special mouthpiece which allowed me to articulate underwater. Dumas had no speaking facility, but could answer me with nods and gestures.

I turned face down and plunged through the dark door. I rapidly pa.s.sed the b.u.t.tress into the shaft, unworried about Dumas' keeping pace on the thirty-foot cord at my waist. He can outswim me any time. Our dive was a trial run: we were the first cordee of a series. We intended to waste no time on details of topography but to proceed directly to the pig-iron and take it on to the elbow of Negri's syphon, from which we would quickly take up a new thread into the secret of the Fountain. In retrospect, I also find that my subconscious mechanism was anxious to conclude the first dive as soon as possible.

I glanced back and saw Didi gliding easily through the door against a faint green haze. The sky was no longer our business. We belonged now to a world where no light had ever struck. I could not see my flashlight beam beneath me in the frightening dark the water had no suspended motes to reflect light. A disc of light blinked on and off in the darkness when my flashlight beam hit rock. I went head down with tigerish speed, sinking by my overballast, unmindful of Dumas. Suddenly I was held by the belt and stones rattled past me. Heavier borne than I, Dumas was trying to brake his fall with his feet. His suit was filling with water. Big limestone blocks came loose and rumbled down round me. A stone bounced off my shoulder. I remotely realized I should try to think. I could not think.

Ninety feet down I found the pig-iron standing on a ledge. It did not appear in the torch beam as an object from the world above, but as something germane to this place. Dimly I recalled that I must do something about the pig-iron. I shoved it down the slope. It roared down with Dumas' stones. During this blurred effort I did not notice that I had lost the lines coiled on my arm. I did not know that I had failed to give Fargues three tugs on the line to pay out the weight. I had forgotten Fargues and everything behind us. The tunnel broke into a sharper decline. I circled my right hand continuously, playing the torch in spirals on the clean and polished walls. I was travelling at two knots. I was in the Paris subway. I met n.o.body. There was n.o.body in the Metro, not a single rock ba.s.s. No fish at all.

At that time of year our ears are well trained to pressure after a summer's diving. Why did my ears ache so? Something was happening. The light no longer ran around the tunnel walls. The beam spread on a flat bottom, covered with pebbles. It was earth, not rock, the detritus of the chasm. I could find no walls. I was on the floor of a vast drowned cave. I found the pig-iron, but no zinc boat, no syphon, and no precariously balanced rock. My head ached. I was drained of initiative.

I returned to our purpose, to learn the geography of the immensity that had no visible roof or walls, but rolled away down at a forty-five-degree incline. I could not surface without searching the ceiling for the hole that led up to the inner cavern of our theory.

I was attached to something, I remembered. The flashlight picked out a rope which curled off to a strange form floating supine above the pebbles. Dumas hung there in his c.u.mbersome equipment, holding his torch like a ridiculous glow-worm. Only his arms were moving. He was sleepily trying to tie his piolet to the pig-iron line. His black frogman suit was filling with water. He struggled weakly to inflate it with compressed air. I swam to him and looked at his depth gauge. It read one hundred and fifty feet. The dial was flooded. We were deeper than that. We were at least two hundred feet down, four hundred feet away from the surface at the bottom of a crooked slanting tunnel.

We had rapture of the depths, but not the familiar drunkenness. We felt heavy and anxious, instead of exuberant. Dumas was stricken worse than I. I thought: This is not how I should feel at this depth . . . I can't go back until I learn where we are. Why don't I feel a current? The pig-iron line is our only way home. What if we lose it? Where is the rope I had on my arm? I was able in that instant to recall that I had lost the line somewhere above. I took Dumas' hand and closed it round the guide line. 'Stay here,' I shouted. 'I'll find the shaft.' Dumas understood me to mean I had no air and needed the safety aqualung. I sent the beam of the flashlight round in search of the roof of the cave. I found no ceiling.

Dumas was pa.s.sing under heavy narcosis. He thought I was the one in danger. He fumbled to release the emergency lung. As he tugged hopelessly at his belt, he scudded across the drowned shingle and abandoned the guide line to the surface. The rope dissolved in the dark. I was swimming above, mulishly seeking for a wall or a ceiling, when I felt his weight tugging me back like a drifting anchor, restraining my search.

Above us somewhere were seventy fathoms of tunnel and crumbling rock. My weakened brain found the power to conjure up our fate. When our air ran out we would grope along the ceiling and suffocate in dulled agony. I shook off this thought and swam down to the ebbing glow of Dumas' flashlight.

He had almost lost consciousness. When I touched him, he grabbed my wrist with awful strength and hauled me towards him for a final experience of life, an embrace that would take me with him. I twisted out of his hold and backed away. I examined Dumas with the torch. I saw his protruding eyes rolling inside the mask.

The cave was quiet between my gasping breaths. I marshalled all my remaining brain power to consider the situation. Fortunately there was no current to carry Dumas away from the pig-iron. If there had been the least current, we would have been lost. The pig-iron must be near. I looked for that rusted metal block, more precious than gold. And suddenly there it was, stolid and rea.s.suring. Its line flew away into the dark, towards the hope of life.

In his stupor, Didi lost control of his jaws and his mouthpiece slipped from his teeth. He swallowed water and took some in his lungs before he somehow got the grip back into his mouth. Now, with the guide line beckoning, I realized that I could not swim to the surface, carrying the inert Dumas, who weighed at least twenty-five pounds in his waterlogged suit. I was in a state of exhaustion from the mysterious effect of the cave. We had not exercised strenuously, yet Dumas was helpless and I was becoming idiotic.

I would climb the rope, dragging Dumas with me. I grasped the pig-iron rope and started up, hand-over-hand, with Dumas drifting below, along the smooth vertical rock.

My first three hand-holds on the line were interpreted correctly by Fargues as the signal to pay out more rope. He did so, with a will. With utter dismay I saw the rope slackening and made super-human efforts to climb it. Fargues smartly fed me rope when he felt my traction. It took an eternal minute for me to work out the right tactics, namely that I should continue to haul down the rope, until the end of it came into Fargues' hand. He would never let go. I hauled the rope in dull glee.

Four hundred feet of rope pa.s.sed through my hands and curled into the cave. And a knot came into my hands. Fargues was giving us more rope to penetrate the ultimate gallery of Vaucluse. He had efficiently tied on another length to encourage us to pa.s.s deeper.

I dropped the rope like an enemy. I would have to climb the tunnel slope like an alpinist. Foot by foot I climbed the finger-holds of rock, stopping when I lost my respiratory rhythm by exertion and was near to fainting. I drove myself on, and felt that I was making progress. I reached for a good hand-hold, standing on the tips of my fins. The crag eluded my fingers and I was dragged down by the weight of Dumas.

The shock turned my mind to the rope again and I suddenly recalled our signals: six tugs meant pull everything up. I grabbed the line and jerked it, confident that I could count to six. The line was slack and snagged on obstacles in the four hundred feet to Maurice Fargues. Fargues, do you not understand my situation? I was at the end of my strength. Dumas was hanging on me.

Why doesn't Dumas understand how bad he is for me? Dumas, you will die, anyway. Maybe you are already gone. Didi, I hate to do it, but you are dead and you will not let me live. Go away, Didi. I reached for my belt dagger and prepared to cut the cord to Dumas.

Even in my incompetence there was something that held the knife in its holster. Before I cut you off, Didi, I will try again to reach Fargues. I took the line and repeated the distress signal, again and again. Didi, I am doing all a man can do. I am dying too.

On sh.o.r.e, Fargues stood in perplexed concentration. The first cordee had not been down for the full period of the plan, but the strange pattern of our signals disturbed him. His hard but sensitive hand on the rope had felt no clear signals since the episode a few minutes back when suddenly we wanted lots of rope. He had given it to us, eagerly adding another length. They must have found something tremendous down there, thought Fargues. He was eager to penetrate the mystery himself on a later dive. Yet he was uneasy about the lifelessness of the rope in the last few minutes. He frowned and fingered the rope like a pulse, and waited.

Up from the lag of rope, four hundred feet across the friction of rocks, and through the surface, a faint vibration tickled Fargue's finger. He reacted by standing and grumbling, half to himself, half to the cave watchers, 'Qu'est-ce que je risque? De me faire engueuler?' (What do I risk? Being sworn at?) With a set face he hauled the pig-iron in.

I felt the rope tighten. I jerked my hand off the dagger and hung on. Dumas' air cylinders rang on the rocks as we were borne swiftly up. A hundred feet above I saw a faint triangle of green light, where hope lay. In less than a minute Fargues pulled us out into the pool and leaped in the water after the senseless Dumas. Tailliez and Pinard waded in after me. I gathered what strength I had left to control my emotions, not to break down. I managed to walk out of the pool. Dumas lay on his stomach and vomited. Our friends stripped off our rubber suits. I warmed myself round a cauldron of flaming petrol. Fargues and the doctor worked over Dumas. In five minutes he was on his feet, standing by the fire. I handed him a bottle of brandy. He took a drink and said, 'I'm going down again.' I wondered where Simone was.

The Mayor said, 'When your air bubbles stopped coming to the surface, your wife ran down the hill. She said she could not stand it.' Poor Simone had raced to a cafe in Vaucluse and ordered the most powerful spirit in the house. A rumour-monger raced through the village, yelling that one of the divers was drowned. Simone cried, 'Which one? What colour was his mask?'

'Red,' said the harbinger.

Simone gasped with relief my mask was blue. Then she thought of Didi in his red mask and her joy collapsed. She returned distractedly up the trail to the Fountain. There stood Didi, a miracle to her.

Dumas' recuperative powers soon brought his colour back and his mind cleared. He wanted to know why we had been drugged in the cavern. In the afternoon another cordee, Tailliez and Guy Morandiere, prepared to dive, without the junk we had carried. They wore only long underwear and light ballast, which made them slightly buoyant. They planned to go to the cavern and reconnoitre for the pa.s.sage which led to the secret of Vaucluse. As soon as they found it, they would immediately return and sketch the layout for the third cordee, which would make the final plunge.

From the diving logs of Captain Tailliez and Morandiere, I am able to recount their experience, which was almost as appalling as ours. Certainly it took greater courage than ours to enter the Fountain from which we had been so luckily saved. In the few minutes they spent just under the surface of the pool, getting used to the water, Morandiere felt intense cold. They entered the tunnel abreast, roped together. Second cordee tactics were to swim down side by side along the ceiling.

When they encountered humps sticking down from the roof, they were to duck under them and then return to follow the ceiling closely. Each hump they met promised to level off beyond, but never did. They went down and down. Our only depth gauge had been ruined, but the veteran Tailliez had a sharp physiological sense of depth. At an estimated one hundred and twenty feet he halted the march so they might study their subjective sensations. Tailliez felt the first inviting throbs of rapture of the depths. He knew that to be impossible at a mere twenty fathoms. However, the symptoms were p.r.o.nounced.

He called to Morandiere that they should turn back. Morandiere manoeuvred himself and the rope to facilitate Tailliez's turnabout. As he did so, he heard that Tailliez's respiratory rhythm was disorderly, and faced his partner so that Tailliez could see him give six pulls on the pig-iron rope. Unable to exchange words underwater, the team had to depend on errant flashlight beams and understanding to accomplish the turn. Morandiere stationed himself below Tailliez to conduct the Captain to the surface. Tailliez construed these activities to mean that Morandiere was in trouble. Both men were slipping into the blank rapture that had almost finished the first cordee.

Tailliez carefully climbed the guide line. The rope behind drifted aimlessly in the water, and a loop hung round his shoulders. Tailliez felt he had to sever the rope before it entangled him. He whipped out his dagger and cut it away. Morandiere, swimming freely below him, was afraid his mate was pa.s.sing out. The confused second cordee ascended to the green hall light of the Fountain. Morandiere closed in, took Tailliez's feet, and gave him a strong boost through the narrow door. The effort upset Morandiere's breathing cycle.

We saw Tailliez emerge in his white underwear, Morandiere following through the underwater door. Tailliez broke the surface, found a footing, and walked out of the water, erect and wild-eyed. In his right hand he held his dagger, upside down. His fingers were cut to the bone by the blade and blood was flowing down his sodden woollens. He did not feel it.

We resolved to call it a day with a shallow plunge to map the entrance of the Fountain. We made sure that Didi, in his anger against the cave, could not slip down to the drowned cavern that had nearly been our tomb. Fargues lashed a 150-foot line to Dumas' waist and took Didi's dagger to prevent him cutting himself loose and going down further. The final reconnaissance of the entrance shaft pa.s.sed without incident.

It was an emotional day. That evening in Vaucluse the first and second cordees made a subjective comparison of cognac narcosis and rapture of the Fountain. None of us could relax, thinking of the enigmatic stupor that had overtaken us. We knew the berserk intoxication of l'ivresse des grandes profondeurs at two hundred and fifty feet in the sea, but why did this clear, lifeless limestone water cheat a man's mind in a different way?

Simone, Didi and I drove back to Toulon that night, thinking hard, despite fatigue and headache. Long silences were s.p.a.ced by occasional suggestions. Didi said, 'Narcotic effects aren't the only cause of diving accidents. There are social and subjective fears, the air you breathe . . .' I jumped at the idea. 'The air you breathe!' I said. 'Let's run a lab test on the air left in the lungs.'

The next morning we sampled the cylinders. The a.n.a.lysis showed 1/2000 of carbon monoxide. At a depth of one hundred and sixty feet the effect of carbon monoxide is sixfold. The amount we were breathing may kill a man in twenty minutes. We started our new Diesel-powered free-piston air compressor. We saw the compressor sucking in its own exhaust fumes. We had all been breathing lethal doses of carbon monoxide.

Deserts Swedish explorer and geographer, the leader of many expeditions to Tibet, China and Central Asia. The incident below took place in the Gobi Desert in 1895.

That night I wrote what I supposed were to be my last lines in my diary: 'Halted on a high dune, where the camels dropped. We examined the east through the field gla.s.ses: mountains of sand in all directions, not a straw, no life. All, men as well as camels, are extremely weak. G.o.d help us!' May Day, a springtime feast of joy and light at home in Sweden, was for us the heaviest day on our via dolorosa through the desert.

The night had been quiet, clear and cold; but the sun was hardly above the horizon when it grew warm. The men squeezed the last drops of the rancid oil out of a goatskin and gave them to the camels. The day before I had not had a single drop of water, and the day before that, only two cups. I was suffering from thirst; and when by chance I found the bottle in which we kept the Chinese spirits for the Primus stove, I could not resist the temptation to drink some of it. It was a foolish thing to do; but nevertheless I drank half the bottle. Yoldash heard the gurgling sound and came toward me, wagging his tail. I let him have a sniff. He snorted and went away sadly. I threw the bottle away and the rest of the liquid flowed out into the sand.

That treacherous drink finished me. I tried to rise but my legs would not support me. The caravan broke camp but I remained behind. Islam Bai led, compa.s.s in hand, going due east. The sun was already burning hot. My men probably thought I would die where I lay. They went on slowly, like snails. The sound of the bells grew fainter and finally died away altogether. On every dune-crest the caravan reappeared like a dark spot, smaller and smaller; in every hollow between the dunes it remained concealed for a while. Finally I saw it no more. But the deep trail, with its dark shadows from the sun, which was still low, reminded me of the danger of my situation. I had not strength enough to follow the others. They had left me. The horrible desert extended in all directions. The sun was burning and blinding; there was not a breath of air.

Then a terrible thought struck me. What if this was the quiet preceding a storm? At any moment, then, I might see the black streak across the horizon in the east, which heralded the approach of a sandstorm. The trail of the caravan would then be obliterated in a few moments, and I would never find my men and camels again, those wrecks of the ships of the desert. I exerted all my willpower, got up, reeled, fell, crawled for a while along the trail, got up again, dragged myself along, and crawled. One hour pa.s.sed, and then another. From the ridge of a dune I saw the caravan. It was standing still. The bells had ceased tinkling. By superhuman efforts I managed to reach it.

Islam stood on a ridge, scanning the eastern horizon and shading his eyes with his hand. Again he asked permission to hurry eastward with the jugs. But seeing my condition he quickly abandoned the idea. Mohammed Shah was lying on his face, sobbingly invoking Allah. Kasim sat in the shadow of a camel, his face covered with his hands. He told me that Mohammed Shah had been raving about water all the way. Yolchi lay on the sand as if he were dead.

Islam suggested that we continue and look for a spot of hard clay ground, where we might dig for water. All the camels were lying down. I climbed on the white one. Like the others, he refused to get up. Our plight was desperate. Here we were to die. Mohammed Shah lay babbling, toying with the sand and raving about water. I realized that we had reached the last act of our desert drama. But I was not yet ready to give in altogether.

The sun was now glowing like an oven. 'When the sun has gone down,' I said to Islam, 'we will break camp and march all night. Up with the tent!' The camels were freed from their burdens and lay in the blazing sun all day. Islam and Kasim pitched the tent. I crawled in, undressed completely, and lay down on a blanket, my head pillowed on a sack. Islam, Kasim, Yoldash and the sheep went into the shade, while Mohammed Shah and Yolchi stayed where they had fallen. The hens were the only ones to keep up their spirits. This death-camp was the unhappiest I lived through in all my wanderings in Asia.

It was only half past nine in the morning, and we had hardly traversed three miles. I was absolutely done up and unable to move a finger. I thought I was dying. I imagined myself already lying in a mortuary chapel. The church bells had stopped tolling for the funeral. My whole life flew past me like a dream. There were not many hours left me on the threshold of eternity. But most of all, I was tormented by the thought of the anxiety and uncertainty which I would cause my parents and brother and sisters. When I should be reported missing, Consul Petrovsky would make investigations. He would learn that I had left Merket on 10 April. All traces after that, however, would then have been swept away; for several storms would have pa.s.sed over the desert since then. They would wait and wait at home. One year would pa.s.s after another. But no news would come, and finally they would cease hoping.

About noon the slack flaps of the tent began to bulge, and a faint southerly breeze moved over the desert. It blew stronger, and after a couple of hours it was so fresh that I rolled myself up in my blanket.

And now a miracle happened! My debility vanished and my strength returned! If ever I longed for the sunset it was now. I did not want to die: I would not die in this miserable, sandy desert! I could run, walk, crawl on my hands and feet. My men might not survive, but I had to find water! The sun lay like a red-hot cannonball on a dune in the west. I was in the best of condition. I dressed and ordered Islam and Kasim to prepare for departure. The sunset glow spread its purple light over the dunes. Mohammed Shah and Yolchi were in the same position as in the morning. The former had already begun his death-struggle, and he never regained consciousness. But the latter woke to life in the cool of the evening. With his hands clenched he crawled up to me and cried pitifully: 'Water! Give us water, sir! Only a drop of water!' Then he crawled away.

'Is there no liquid here, whatever?' I said.

'Why, the rooster!' So they cut off the rooster's head and drank his blood. But that was only a drop in the bucket. Their eyes fell on the sheep, which had followed us as faithfully as a dog without complaining. Everyone hesitated. It would be murder to kill the sheep to prolong our lives for only one day. But Islam led it away, turned its head towards Mecca and slashed its carotids. The blood, reddish-brown and ill-smelling, flowed slowly and thickly. It coagulated immediately into a cake, which the men gulped down. I tried it, too; but it was nauseous, and the mucous membrane of my throat was so dry that it stuck there, and I had to get rid of it quickly.

Mad with thirst, Islam and Yolchi collected camel's urine in a receptacle, mixed it with sugar and vinegar, held their noses, and drank. Kasim and I declined to join in this drinking-bout. The two who had drunk this poison were totally incapacitated. They were overcome with violent cramps and vomiting, and lay writhing and groaning on the sand.

Islam recovered slightly. Before darkness fell we went over our baggage. I laid everything that was irreplaceable in one pile: notebooks, itineraries, maps, instruments, pencils and paper, arms and ammunition, the Chinese silver (about 260), lanterns, candles, a pail, a shovel, provisions for three days, some tobacco and a few other things. A pocket Bible was the only book included. Among the things abandoned were the cameras and about a thousand plates, of which about one hundred had already been exposed, the medicine-chest, saddles, clothes, presents intended for the natives, and much besides. I removed a suit of clean clothing from the pile of discarded things and changed everything from head to foot; for if I was to die and be buried by the sandstorms in the eternal desert, I would at least be robed in a clean, new shroud.

The things we had decided to take along were packed in soft saddle-bags, and these were fastened to the camels. All the pack-saddles were discarded, as they would only have added unnecessary weight.

Yolchi had crawled into the tent to lie down on my blanket. He looked repulsive, soiled as he was with blood from the lungs of the sheep. I tried to brace him up and advised him to follow our track during the night. He did not answer. Mohammed Shah was already delirious. In his delirium he muttered the name of Allah. I tried to make his head comfortable, pa.s.sed my hand over his burning forehead, begged him to crawl along our trail as far as he could, and told him that we would return to rescue him as soon as we found water.

The two men eventually died in the death-camp, or near it. They were never heard of; and when, after a year had elapsed, they were still missing, I gave a sum of money to their respective widows and children.

All five camels were induced to get up, and they were tied to one another in single file. Islam led and Kasim brought up the rear. We did not take the two dying men along, because the camels were too weak to carry them; and, indeed, in their deplorable condition, they could not have kept their seats between the humps. We also cherished the hope that we would find water, in which case we were going to fill the two goatskins that we still carried, and hurry back to save the unfortunate ones.

The hens, having satisfied their keen hunger with the dead sheep's blood, had gone to rest. A silence more profound than that of the grave prevailed around the tent. As twilight was about to merge into darkness, the bronze bells sounded for the last time. We headed eastward as usual, avoiding the highest ridges. After a few minutes' walk I turned about, and gave a farewell glance at the death-camp. The tent stood out distinctly in the vanishing daylight that still lingered in the west. It was a relief to get away from this ghastly place. It was soon swallowed up by the night . . .

Thus we walked on through the night and the sand. After two hours of it, we were so exhausted from fatigue and from lack of sleep, that we flung ourselves headlong on the sand, and dozed off. I was wearing thin, white, cotton clothes, and was soon awakened by the cold night air. Then we walked again, till the limit of our endurance was reached. We slept once more on a dune. My stiff-topped boots, reaching to my knees, made progress difficult. I was on the point of throwing them away several times, but fortunately I did not do so.

After another halt we walked on for five hours more, that is, from four to nine in the morning. This was on 2 May. Then one hour's rest again, and one and a half hour's slow march. The sun was blazing. All became black before our eyes as we sank down on the sand. Kasim dug out, from a northerly slope, sand which was still cold from the night. I stripped and laid myself down in it, while Kasim shovelled sand over me up to my neck. He did the same for himself. Our heads were quite close to each other, and we shaded ourselves from the sun by hanging our clothes on the spade, which we had stuck in the ground.

All day long we lay like this, speaking not a word, and not getting a wink of sleep. The turquoise-blue sky arched over us, and the yellow sea of the desert extended around us, stretching to the horizon.

When the ball of the sun again rested on the ridge of a dune in the west, we got up, shook off the sand, dressed, and dragged ourselves slowly with innumerable interruptions, towards the east, until one o'clock in the morning.

The sand-bath, although cooling and pleasant during the heat of the day, was also weakening. Our strength was ebbing. We could not cover as much ground as the night before. Thirst did not torment us, as it had done during the first days, for the mouth-cavity had become as dry as the outside skin, and the craving was dulled. An increasing feebleness set in instead. The functioning of all the glands was reduced. Our blood got thicker and flowed through the capillaries with increasing sluggishness. Sooner or later this process of drying-up would reach its climax in death.

From one o'clock until half past four in the morning, on 3 May, we lay inanimate; and not even the cold night air could rouse us to go on. But at dawn we dragged ourselves forwards again. We would take a couple of steps intermittently. We managed to get down the sandy slopes fairly well, but climbing the waves of sand was heavy work.

At sunrise, Kasim caught me by the shoulder, stared, and pointed east, without saying a word.

'What is it?' I whispered.

'A tamarisk,' he gasped.

A sign of vegetation at last! G.o.d be praised! Our hopes, which had been close to extinction, flamed up once more. We walked, dragged ourselves, and staggered for three hours, before we reached that first bush an olive branch intimating that the sea of the desert had a sh.o.r.e. We thanked G.o.d for this blessed gift, as we chewed the bitter green needles of the tamarisk. Like a water lily the bush stood on its wave of sand, basking in the sun. But how far below was the water that nourished its roots?

About ten o'clock, we found another tamarisk; and we saw several more in the east. But our strength was gone. We undressed, buried ourselves in the sand, and hung our clothes on the branches of the tamarisk to make shade.

We lay in silence for nine hours. The hot desert air dried our faces into parchment. At seven o'clock, we dressed and continued onward. We went more slowly than ever. After three hours' walk in the dark, Kasim stopped short, and whispered: 'Poplars!'