He drank a few sips of warm water, carefully popped the cork in, then started north, trying to refrain from counting his steps, though he was aware that he would eventually end up doing that too. On the third day he awoke not till noon, his mouth parched and dry. The fox flapped its big ears, grabbed the piece of breadcrumbs, and disappeared. In the evening he was no longer able to look for any bushes, and dropped down at the foot of a dune, and fell into a deep sleep, which seemed to him more like fainting than sleep. The speed of the two types of airplanes was somewhat similar, so he didn’t hope to catch up very quickly, but the Messerschmitt had the disadvantage that it had less fuel than he did, so he couldn’t go too far south without running out of time.
