and shoulder, motionless and
unconscious, hardly breathing, but alive, with his waist encircled by
Jason's great right arm, and his waist-belt grasped tight as with the
grip of a talon by Jason's hard right hand.

Before long, Sunlocks recovered some partial consciousness and cried
in a faint voice for water. Jason glanced around on the arid plain as
if his eyes would pierce the ground for a spring, but no water could
he see on any side of him, and so without a word of answer he strode
along.

"Water, water," cried Sunlocks again, and just then Jason caught the
side-long glint of a river that ran like a pearl chain down the black
breast of a mountain.

"Water," cried Sunlocks again and yet again, in a voice of pain and
deep pleading, not rightly knowing yet where he was or what bad
chance had befallen him.

"Yes, yes, one moment more, only a moment, there--there--there!"
whispered Jason.

And muttering such words of comfort and cheer, he quickened his pace
towards the river. But when he got near to it he stopped short with a
cry of dismay. The river bubbled and smoked.

"Hot! It is hot," cried Jason. "And the land is accursed."

At that word, Sunlocks uttered a low groan, and his head, which had
been partly lifted, fell heavily backwards, and his hair hung over
Jason's shoulder. He was again unconscious.

Then more than ever like a wild beast ranging the hills with its
prey, Jason strode along. And presently he saw a lake of blue water
far away. He knew it for cold water, blessed, ice-cold water, water
to bathe the hot forehead with, water to drink. With a cry of joy,
which there was no human ear to hear, he turned and made towards it;
but just as he did so, softening as he went, and muttering from his
own parched throat words of hope and comfort to the unconscious man
he carried, a gunshot echoed through the mountains above his head.

He knew what the shot was; it was the signal of his escape. And
looking down to the valley, he saw that the guards of the settlement
were gathering on their ponies in the very line of the plain that he
must traverse to reach the water for which Sunlocks thirsted.

Then "Water, water," came again in the same faint voice as before,
and whether with his actual ear he heard that cry, or in the torment
of his distraught sense it only rang out in his empty heart, no man
shall say. But all the same he answered it from his choking throat,
"Patience, patience."

And then, with anot