ue party headed by Quick,
or perhaps the oasis itself. Indeed, once we did see it, green and
shining, not more than three miles away, but when we got to the head of
the hill beyond which it should lie we found that the vision was only
a mirage, and our hearts nearly broke with disappointment. Oh! to men
dying of thirst, that mirage was indeed a cruel mockery.

At length night approached, and the mountains were yet a long way off.
We could march no more, and sank down exhausted, lying on our faces,
because our backs were so cut by the driving sand and blistered by
the sun that we could not sit. By now almost all our water was gone.
Suddenly Higgs nudged us and pointed upwards. Following the line of his
hand, we saw, not thirty yards away and showing clear against the sky,
a file of antelopes trekking along the sand-ridge, doubtless on a night
journey from one pasturage to another.

"You fellows shoot," he muttered; "I might miss and frighten them away,"
for in his distress poor Higgs was growing modest.

Slowly Orme and I drew ourselves to our knees, cocking our rifles. By
this time all the buck save one had passed; there were but six of them,
and this one marched along about twenty yards behind the others. Orme
pulled the trigger, but his rifle would not go off because, as he
discovered afterwards, some sand had worked into the mechanism of the
lock.

Meanwhile I had also covered the buck, but the sunset dazzled my
weakened eyes, and my arms were feeble; also my terrible anxiety for
success, since I knew that on this shot hung our lives, unnerved me. But
it must be now or never; in three more paces the beast would be down the
dip.

I fired, and knowing that I had missed, turned sick and faint. The
antelope bounded forward a few yards right to the edge of the dip; then,
never having heard such a sound before, and being overcome by some fatal
curiosity, stopped and turned around, staring at the direction whence it
had come.

Despairingly I fired again, almost without taking aim, and this time the
bullet went in beneath the throat, and, raking the animal, dropped it
dead as a stone. We scrambled to it, and presently were engaged in an
awful meal of which we never afterwards liked to think. Happily for us
that antelope must have drunk water not long before.

Our hunger and thirst assuaged after this horrible fashion, we slept
awhile by the carcase, then arose extraordinarily refreshed, and, having
cut off some hunk