It was a sight to see them slink in between the useless showers, which fell like hot tears upon us--sleek panthers with lolling tongues; russet-red wood dogs; bears and sloths from the dark arcades of the remote forests, all casting themselves down gasping in the palace shadows; strange deer, who staggered to the garden plots and lay there heaving their lives out; mighty boars, who came from the river marshes and silently nozzled a place amongst their enemies to die in! Even the wolves came off the hills, and, with bloodshot eyes and tongues that dripped foam, flung themselves down in my shadow.
All along the tall stockades apes sat sad and listless, and on the roof-ridges storks were dying.

Over the branches of the trees, whose leaves were as thin as though we had had a six months' drought, the toucans and Martian parrots hung limp and fashionless like gaudy rags, and in the courtyard ground the corn-rats came up from their tunnels in the scorching earth to die, squeaking in scores along under the walls.
Our common sorrow made us as sociable as though I were Noah, and Ar-hap's palace mound another Ararat.

Hour after hour I sat amongst all these lesser beasts in the hot darkness, waiting for the end.
Every now and then the heavy clouds parted, changing the gloom to sudden fiery daylight as the great red eye in the west looked upon us through the crevice, and, taking advantage of those gleams, I would reel across to where, under a spout leading from a dried rivulet, I had placed a cup to collect the slow and tepid drops that were all now coming down the reed for Heru.

And as I went back each time with that sickly spoonful at the bottom of the vessel all the dying beasts lifted their heads and watched--the thirsty wolves shambling after me; the boars half sat up and grunted plaintively; the panthers, too weak to rise, beat the dusty ground with their tails; and from the portico the blue storks, with trailing wings, croaked husky greeting.
But slower and slower came the dripping water, more and more intolerable the heat.

At last I could stand it no longer.