But everyone fixed their attention on the struggle between Bodkin and Gill. Bodkin, spurred on by fierce anger, put forth a prodigious effort and began to pull ahead once more. His huge, massive body swayed from left to right and back again along his line of reaping, so that he seemed to be snatching up the long yellow barley stalks, so fast did they fall before him. Whenever a sheaf was complete, his thin wife seized it and bound it. Yet for all that, when Bodkin paused at five o'clock to cast a glance behind him, there was Gill advancing with a terrifying regularity. And suddenly Bodkin felt the whole day's exhaus-tion overpowering him.

That exhaustion took first the form of a consuming thirst. He sent his wife to the wall to fetch the spare can of tea, and when she came back with it he began to drink. But the more he drank, the greater grew his thirst. His friends among the crowd of onlookers

shouted warnings to him, but thirst had robbed him of his reason, and he went on drinking. The shore wall — and victory — were now very near. He kept staring at the wall in a daze as he swung his hook... and kept on drinking... Then his senses began to grow dim... drowsiness weighed down his eyelids, and his movements came almost without consciousness. He saw nothing but the wall, and he struggled onward... and began to talk to himself... He reached the wall at one end of his strip. Nothing remained but to reap across to the other end and be done... Three more swaths, and then... the best man in Inverara... five pounds...

But at that moment a mighty cheer thundered in his ears, and a shout filled the wide spaces of the air: "Gill has won!" And Bodkin threw himself upon the ground, groaning.

From al-Adab wa-l-Fann