The utter futility of his tiny strength against the power of
the universe appalled him. And then he knew. The merciless sun was on
the way, already rising. Its return was like the presage of execution
to him.... It came. With true horror he watched the marvellous swift dawn break
over the sandy sea. The eastern sky glowed hurriedly as from crimson
fires. Ridges, not noticeable in the starlight, turned black in endless
series, like flat-topped billows of a frozen ocean. Wide streaks of
blue and yellow followed, as the sky dropped sheets of faint light
upon the wind-eaten cliffs and showed their under sides. They did not
advance; they waited till the sun was up--and then they moved; they
rose and sank; they shifted as the sunshine lifted them and the shadows
crept away. But in an hour there would be no shadows any more. There
would be no shade!... The little groups of stones began to dance. It was horrible. The
unbroken, huge expanse lay round him, warming up, twelve hours of
blazing hell to come. Already the monstrous Desert glared, each bit
familiar, since each bit was a repetition of the bit before, behind, on
either side. It laughed at guidance and direction. He rose and walked;
for miles he walked, though how many, north, south, or west, he knew
not. The frantic thing was in him now, the fury of the Desert; he took
its pace, its endless, tireless stride, the stride of the burning,
murderous Desert that is--waterless. He felt it alive--a blindly heaving
desire in it to reduce him to its conditionless, awful dryness. He
felt--yet knowing this was feverish and _not_ to be believed--that
his own small life lay on its mighty surface, a mere dot in space, a
mere heap of little stones. His emotions, his fears, his hopes, his
ambition, his love--mere bundled group of little unimportant stones
that danced with apparent activity for a moment, then were merged in
the undifferentiated surface underneath. He was included in a purpose
greater than his own. The will made a plucky effort then. "A night and a day," he laughed,
while his lips cracked smartingly with the stretching of the skin,
"what is it? Many a chap has lasted days and days...!" Yes, only
he was not of that rare company. He was ordinary, unaccustomed
to privation, weak, untrained of spirit, unacquainted with stern
resistance. He knew not how to spare himself. The Desert struck him
where it pleased--all over. It played with him. His tongue was swollen;
the parched throat could not swallow. He sank.... An hour he lay
there, just wit enough in him to choose the top of a mound where he
could be most easily seen. He lay two hours, three, four hours.... The heat blazed down upon him like a furnace.... The sky, when he
opened his eyes once, was empty ... then a speck became visible in the
blue expanse; and presently another speck. They came from nowhere. They hovered very high, almost out of sight. They appeared, they
disappeared, they--reappeared. Nearer and nearer they swung down, in
sweeping stealthy circles ... little dancing groups of them, miles away
but ever drawing closer--the vultures.... He had strained his ears so long for sounds of feet and voices that
it seemed he could no longer hear at all. Hearing had ceased within
him. Then came the water-dreams, with their agonising torture. He
heard _that_ ... heard it running in silvery streams and rivulets
across green English meadows. It rippled with silvery music. He heard
it splash. He dipped hands and feet and head in it--in deep, clear
pools of generous depth. He drank; with his skin he drank, not with
mouth and throat alone. Ice clinked in effervescent, sparkling water
against a glass. He swam and plunged. Water gushed freely over back and
shoulders, gallons and gallons of it, bathfuls and to spare, a flood of
gushing, crystal, cool, life-giving liquid.... And then he stood in a
beech wood and felt the streaming deluge of delicious summer rain upon
his face; heard it drip luxuriantly upon a million thirsty leaves. The
wet trunks shone, the damp moss spread its perfume, ferns waved heavily
in the moist atmosphere. He was soaked to the skin in it. A mountain
torrent, fresh from fields of snow, foamed boiling past, and the spray
fell in a shower upon his cheeks and hair. He dived--head foremost....
Ah, he was up to the neck ... and _she_ was with him; they were under
water together; he saw her eyes gleaming into his own beneath the
copious flood. The voice, however, was not hers.... "You will drown, yet you
will not know you drown...!" His swollen tongue called out a name. But no sound was audible. He closed his eyes. There came sweet
unconsciousness....

A sound in that instant _was_ audible, though. It was a
voice--voices--and the thud of animal hoofs upon the sand. The specks
had vanished from the sky as mysteriously as they came. And, as though
in answer to the sound, he made a movement--an automatic, unconscious
movement. He did not know he moved. And the body, uncontrolled, lost
its precarious balance. He rolled; but he did not know he rolled. Slowly, over the edge of the sloping mound of sand, he turned sideways. Like a log of wood he slid gradually, turning over and over, nothing
to stop him--to the bottom. A few feet only, and not even steep; just
steep enough to keep rolling slowly. There was a--splash. But he did
not know there was a splash. They found him in a pool of water--one of these rare pools the Desert
Bedouin mark preciously for their own. He had lain within three yards
of it for hours. He was drowned ... but he did not know he drowned....




XI

H. S. H.


In the mountain Club Hut, to which he had escaped after weeks of gaiety
in the capital, Delane, young travelling Englishman, sat alone, and
listened to the wind that beat the pines with violence. The firelight
danced over the bare stone floor and raftered ceiling, giving the room
an air of movement, and though the solid walls held steady against the
wild spring hurricane, the cannonading of the wind seemed to threaten
the foundations. For the mountain shook, the forest roared, and the
shadows had a way of running everywhere as though the little building
trembled. Delane watched and listened. He piled the logs on. From time
to time he glanced nervously over his shoulder, restless, half uneasy,
as a burst of spray from the branches dashed against the window, or a
gust of unusual vehemence shook the door. Over-wearied with his long
day's climb among impossible conditions, he now realised, in this
mountain refuge, his utter loneliness; for his mind gave birth to that
unwelcome symptom of true loneliness--that he was not, after all,
alone. Continually he heard steps and voices in the storm. Another
wanderer, another climber out of season like himself, would presently
arrive, and sleep was out of the question until first he heard that
knocking on the door. Almost--he expected some one. He went for the tenth time to the little window.