As I had not the same desperate reasons as M. le Vicomte for accepting
death, I returned, after giving him a word of encouragement, to my
panel, but I had made the mistake of taking a few steps while speaking
and, in the tangle of the illusive forest, I was no longer able to find
my panel for certain! I had to begin all over again, at random,
feeling, fumbling, groping. Now the fever laid hold of me in my turn ... for I found nothing,
absolutely nothing. In the next room, all was silence. We were quite
lost in the forest, without an outlet, a compass, a guide or anything. Oh, I knew what awaited us if nobody came to our aid ...  or if I did
not find the spring! But, look as I might, I found nothing but
branches, beautiful branches that stood straight up before me, or
spread gracefully over my head. But they gave no shade. And this was
natural enough, as we were in an equatorial forest, with the sun right
above our heads, an African forest. M. de Chagny and I had repeatedly taken off our coats and put them on
again, finding at one time that they made us feel still hotter and at
another that they protected us against the heat. I was still making a
moral resistance, but M. de Chagny seemed to me quite "gone." He
pretended that he had been walking in that forest for three days and
nights, without stopping, looking for Christine Daae! From time to
time, he thought he saw her behind the trunk of a tree, or gliding
between the branches; and he called to her with words of supplication
that brought the tears to my eyes. And then, at last:

"Oh, how thirsty I am!" he cried, in delirious accents. I too was thirsty. My throat was on fire. And, yet, squatting on the
floor, I went on hunting, hunting, hunting for the spring of the
invisible door ... especially as it was dangerous to remain in the
forest as evening drew nigh. Already the shades of night were
beginning to surround us. It had happened very quickly: night falls
quickly in tropical countries ... suddenly, with hardly any twilight. Now night, in the forests of the equator, is always dangerous,
particularly when, like ourselves, one has not the materials for a fire
to keep off the beasts of prey. I did indeed try for a moment to break
off the branches, which I would have lit with my dark lantern, but I
knocked myself also against the mirrors and remembered, in time, that
we had only images of branches to do with. The heat did not go with the daylight; on the contrary, it was now
still hotter under the blue rays of the moon. I urged the viscount to
hold our weapons ready to fire and not to stray from camp, while I went
on looking for my spring. Suddenly, we heard a lion roaring a few yards away. "Oh," whispered the viscount, "he is quite close! ... Don't you see
him? ... There ... through the trees ... in that thicket! If he roars
again, I will fire! ..."

And the roaring began again, louder than before. And the viscount
fired, but I do not think that he hit the lion; only, he smashed a
mirror, as I perceived the next morning, at daybreak. We must have
covered a good distance during the night, for we suddenly found
ourselves on the edge of the desert, an immense desert of sand, stones
and rocks. It was really not worth while leaving the forest to come
upon the desert. Tired out, I flung myself down beside the viscount,
for I had had enough of looking for springs which I could not find. I was quite surprised--and I said so to the viscount--that we had
encountered no other dangerous animals during the night. Usually,
after the lion came the leopard and sometimes the buzz of the tsetse
fly. These were easily obtained effects; and I explained to M. de
Chagny that Erik imitated the roar of a lion on a long tabour or
timbrel, with an ass's skin at one end. Over this skin he tied a
string of catgut, which was fastened at the middle to another similar
string passing through the whole length of the tabour. Erik had only
to rub this string with a glove smeared with resin and, according to
the manner in which he rubbed it, he imitated to perfection the voice
of the lion or the leopard, or even the buzzing of the tsetse fly. The idea that Erik was probably in the room beside us, working his
trick, made me suddenly resolve to enter into a parley with him, for we
must obviously give up all thought of taking him by surprise. And by
this time he must be quite aware who were the occupants of his
torture-chamber. I called him:  "Erik! Erik!" I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert, but there was no
answer to my voice. All around us lay the silence and the bare
immensity of that stony desert. What was to become of us in the midst
of that awful solitude? We were beginning literally to die of heat, hunger and thirst ...  of
thirst especially. At last, I saw M. de Chagny raise himself on his
elbow and point to a spot on the horizon. He had discovered an oasis! Yes, far in the distance was an oasis ... an oasis with limpid water,
which reflected the iron trees! ... Tush, it was the scene of the
mirage ... I recognized it at once ... the worst of the three! ... No
one had been able to fight against it ... no one... I did my utmost to
keep my head AND NOT TO HOPE FOR WATER, because I knew that, if a man
hoped for water, the water that reflected the iron tree, and if, after
hoping for water, he struck against the mirror, then there was only one
thing for him to do: to hang himself on the iron tree! So I cried to M. de Chagny:

"It's the mirage! ... It's the mirage! ... Don't believe in the water! ... It's another trick of the mirrors! ..."

Then he flatly told me to shut up, with my tricks of the mirrors, my
springs, my revolving doors and my palaces of illusions! He angrily
declared that I must be either blind or mad to imagine that all that
water flowing over there, among those splendid, numberless trees, was
not real water! ... And the desert was real! ... And so was the
forest! ... And it was no use trying to take him in ... he was an old,
experienced traveler ... he had been all over the place! And he dragged himself along, saying:  "Water! Water!" And his mouth was open, as though he were drinking. And my mouth was open too, as though I were drinking. For we not only saw the water, but WE HEARD IT! ... We heard it flow,
we heard it ripple! ... Do you understand that word "ripple?" ... IT IS
A SOUND WHICH YOU HEAR WITH YOUR TONGUE! ... You put your tongue out
of your mouth to listen to it better! Lastly--and this was the most pitiless torture of all--we heard the
rain and it was not raining! This was an infernal invention...  Oh, I
knew well enough how Erik obtained it! He filled with little stones a
very long and narrow box, broken up inside with wooden and metal
projections. The stones, in falling, struck against these projections
and rebounded from one to another; and the result was a series of
pattering sounds that exactly imitated a rainstorm.