blinding sand, seeing nothing,
knowing nothing but an overpowering desire to escape from the clutching
fiends around, tortured with thirst maddened, screaming. Dark now, as
at midnight, except when a flash of forked lightning burst through the
driving chaos; now I had burst free again, as the storm veered in
another direction, yet still it threatened me and still I galloped on.
Then a snort of fright from the horses, a wild plunge forward that
almost threw me from the saddle, a sense of falling, a stunning crash
that seemed to me to be the bursting asunder of the world's very
foundations and then a merciful oblivion.

CHAPTER VI

THE CRATER THE PLEASANT BERRIES SLEEP AND THE AWAKENING

I awoke to the tortures of the damned, crushed, broken and in
agonizing pain, and with the aasvogels tearing at my face. Pinned to
the earth as by some great weight, my hands were fortunately still
free; and my revolver still in its holster; and a few shots sent the
lewd, cowardly birds flapping away. The blood was streaming from my
face, and again and again I fainted with sheer agony; moreover the
fierce midday sun beat down intolerably full in my eyes, for I lay on
my back and could move nothing but my arms. But gradually the sun
passed, a cool shadow fell across me, and although I believed I was
hurt unto death and indeed longed for death to end my agony some
modicum of relief must have come with the shade, and with it strength
and the desire to live. Moreover, it was borne upon me that from
somewhere near me came the sound of running, gurgling water;
tantalizing and maddening me in my pain and agony. I was lying on a
slope with my head lower than my limbs, and all I could see was the sky
above me; do all I could, I could not lift myself, and could not see
what pinned my lower limbs to the sand.

But, maddened more, I believe, by thirst and hearing water running,
than by the actual agony of my hurt, I at length began to work at the
sand on either side of me with my hands, scratching it away until I had
altered my position enough to enable me to turn somewhat, and raise
myself a little on one elbow.

Then I found it was my dead horses that pinned me down, for both of
them lay crushed and broken partly above me; and looking upwards I saw
that a sheer cliff of smooth rock towered straight above me, from which
the horses had evidently fallen.

I could hear the water plainer now, and though I swooned once or twice
from