nds absorbed it, and the
ceasing of the palms.

Last of all, the river had diminished to a shallow, tortuous delta,
where the Master's numbed feet had touched bottom. There he had
dragged himself ashore, with his goatskin, far more dead than living.
And there, for a time he knew not, consciousness had wholly ceased.

A dull, toneless voice sounded in the Master's ears. Bohannan was
speaking.

"Faith, but it's strange how even the five of us found each other, out
there in the sand," said the major. "What happened to the rest of us,
God knows--maybe!" He choked, coughed, added: "Or to the boys with
Nissr. God rest their souls! I wish I had a sackful of that wine!"
After a long pause: "Don't you, now? What?"

The Master gave no heed. He was trying to ease the position in which
the woman was lying. His jacket was off, now, and he was folding it to
put under her head.

At his touch, she opened vague eyes. She smiled with dry lips, and put
his hand away.

"No, no!" she protested. "No special favors for me! I'm not a woman,
remember. I'm 'Captain Alden,' still--only a Legionary!"

"But--"

"If you favor me in any way, to the detriment of any of the others
or your own, I won't go on! I'm just one of you. Just one of the
survivors, on even terms with the rest. It's give-and-take. I mean
that! You've got to understand me!"

The Master nodded. He knew that tone. Silently he put on his jacket,
again.

The lieutenant's orderly, Lebon, groaned and muttered a prayer to the
Virgin. Leclair sat up, heavily, and blinked with sand-inflamed eyes.

"Time to drink again, _n'est-ce pas_, my Captain?" asked he. "Drink to
the dead!"

"I hope they are dead, rather than prisoners!" exclaimed the Master.
"Yes, we'll drink, and get forward. We've got to make long strides,
tonight. Those Jannati Shahr devils may be after us, tomorrow. Surely
will, if they investigate that delta and find only a few bodies.
They'll conclude some of us have got through. And if they pick up our
trail, with those white dromedaries of theirs--"

"The sacred pigs!" ejaculated Leclair. "Ah, _messieurs_, now you begin
to know the Arabs as I have long known them." With eyes of hate and
pain he peered back at the darkening line of the Iron Mountains.

Bohannan, already loosening the neck of his goat-skin, laughed
hoarsely.

"No wine!" he croaked, "and the water's rationed; even the stinking
water. But the food isn't--good reason, too; there isn't any. Pock