e bags of
t'samma we had piled upon them, and soon they were munching away
contentedly, whilst we rigged up some sort of shelter and lay and
panted till the evening.

Then, and then only, did we discuss what we were next to do. "Master,"
at length said Inyati, "think, and think well. To go back is still
easy, to go forward may well be that we die even as these two have
died!"

"The desert is drier than when I struggled through it, more dead than
alive, by the path these people came by and that way it would be
madness to try! South, we might find another path, but it will be a
longer one and . . . my master can still return. And the stone that my
master can take and I will go on and bring him more, if he will but
return to the camp and there await me. . . . And if I come not in two
moons, I shall be dead. . . ."

He held out the blue diamond as he spoke; but the offer, genuine as it
undoubtedly was, acted as a taunt to me, and I bade him sternly put
back the stone, and talk not to me of returning.

"Thou sayest that the desert is but beginning," I told him. "Am I then
a weakling, to run back like a whipped hound, at the sight of a dead
man? Nay, I will return with the stones I seek, or not at all!"

Inyati nodded his head sagely as he sucked at his cherished pipe.

"Aye! Aye!" he said softly. "Said I not that the stones were magic?
Sad, even as a sick cow, was my master, till I showed him the stone,
and now he is even again as a young bull!"

If he had meant to stir me from the apathy that the desert had brought
upon me, he certainly succeeded, for his complimentary comparison of me
to a sick cow again set me laughing! It was the first time I had
laughed for days, and it did me good.

"Yes, we must go south," said Inyati, "but not far. Only half a march,
and then we will turn again east. Thus shall we find the pans."

That night we did not wait for the moon, but saddled our still jaded
nags before it was well dark, and walking most of the way to rest them,
we set our faces towards the Southern Cross. Half way through the night
we halted, and resting for a while, again pushed on, but this time due
east. Dawn found us eagerly looking round for a change in the landscape
if a featureless chaos of tumbled sand is worthy of such a name? but I,
at any rate, could see nothing.

Not so Inyati; his eyes were better than my field-glasses.

"Look, master!" he said, as the sun rose, "there, and there, and there!
little