.

Thinking the creature would now follow its master, Jason was for
releasing it, but before he had yet fully done so the dog growled and
barked again.

"Erik! Erik!" shouted the voice outside, and from the click-clack of
hoofs Jason judged that one of the men was returning.

Then Jason saw that there was nothing left to him but to quiet the
dog, or it would betray them to their death; so, while the brute
writhed in his great hands, struggling to tear the flesh from them,
he laid hold of its gaping jaws and rived them apart and broke them.
In a moment more the dog was dead.

In the silence that followed, a faint voice came from a distance,
crying, "Sigurd, Sigurd, why are you waiting!"

And then another voice shouted back from near at hand--very near, so
near as to seem to be on top of the hummock, "I've lost the dog; and
I could swear I heard him growling somewhere hereabouts not a minute
since."

Jason was holding his breath again, when suddenly a deep sigh came
from Sunlocks; then another, and another, and then some rambling
words that had no meaning, but made a dull hum in that hollow place.
The man outside must have heard something, for he called his dog
again.

At that Jason's heart fell low, and all he could do he did--he
reached over the outstretched form of his comrade, and put his lips
to the lips of Sunlocks, just that he might smother their deadly
babble with noiseless kisses.

This must have served, for when the voice that was far away shouted
again "Sigurd! Sigurd!" the voice that was near at hand answered,
"Coming." And a moment later, Jason heard the sounds of hoofs going
off from him as before.

Then Michael Sunlocks awoke to full consciousness, and realized his
state, and what had befallen him, and where he was, and who was with
him. And first he was overwhelmed by a tempest of agony at feeling
that he was a lost and forlorn man, blind and maimed, as it seemed at
that time, for all the rest of his life to come. After that he cried
for water, saying that his throat was baked and his tongue cracked,
and Jason replied that all the water they had found that day they had
been forced to leave behind them where they could never return to it.
Then he poured out a torrent of hot reproaches, calling on Jason to
say why he had been brought out there to go mad of thirst; and Jason
listened to all and made no answer, but stood with bent head, and
quivering lips, and great tear-drops on his rugged cheek