There's nothing like a desert watering-hole for making good, brief neighbours out of animals that have nothing much in common other than a thirst. There is the story of the leopard and the deer, standing patiently in line while vipers drink. And the tradition amongst travellers that anyone who pushes at a well will die from drowning. Their bones will never dry. So these four strangers, gathered round the cistern, were more careful and polite than they might have been if they had met, say, at a crowded market stall, where the sharpest elbows and the shrillest voice would get the leanest meat.

Jim Crace, Quarantine (London: Penguin, 1998), 49.