it will help
revive her. And--maybe--we shall find another, better oasis."

Out across the plain he peered, over the sun-dried earth, out into the
distances shrouded with purple mists. His blurred eyes narrowed.

"Why, my God! There's one, now!" he muttered. "A green
one--cool--fresh--"

The Master laid the woman down again in the shadow, got up and
staggered out into the blinding sun. He tottered forward, laughing
hoarsely.

"Cool--_fresh_--" The words came from between parched lips.

All at once the oasis faded to a blur in the brilliant tapestry of the
desert that beckoned: "Come to me--and die!"

The Master recoiled, hands over eyes, mouthing unintelligible words.
Back beside the woman he crouched, fighting his own soul to keep it
from madness. Then he heard her voice, weak, strange:

"Have you drunk, too?"

"Of course!"

"You are not--telling me the truth."

"So help me God!" His fevered lips could hardly form the words.
"There, in the hut--I drank. All I needed."

She grew silent. His conscience lapsed. They lay as if dead, till
almost evening, under the shelter of the blessed shadow.

The rest, even in that desolation, put fresh life into them. At
nightfall they bound up their feet again, ate the dry dates and again
set their blistered faces toward the Red Sea.

The woman's basket was now light, indeed, across her shoulders. Not
all her begging had induced the Master to let her carry the water-jug
there. This, too, he was carrying.

All night long, stopping only when one or the other fell, they
ploughed over basalt and hornblende schist that lacerated their feet,
over blanched immensities under the steel moon, across grim, black
ridges and through a basin of clay, circled by hills.

Strange apparitions mocked and mowed before them, but grimly they gave
no heed. This, they both realized in moments of lucidity, was the last
trek. Either they must find the sea, before another night, or madness
would sink its fangs into their brains. And madness meant--the end.

Their whole consciousness was pain. This pain localized itself
especially in their heads, round which some _jinnee_ of the waste had
riveted red-hot iron bands. There was other pain, too, in the limping
feet cased in the last of the _babooches_, now stiffened with blood.
And in the throat and lungs, what was this burning?

CHAPTER LII

"Thalassa! Thalassa!"

Another of those horrible, red mornings, with a brass circle of
hor