ght.

He thought it must have overwhelmed him for a time at least; yet when it
began to lessen he had not sunk down again. He was still propped upon
hands and knees--the only living creature in that place of dead men.

He could see them which ever way he looked over the trampled
sward--figures huddled or outstretched in the moonlight, all motionless,
ashen-faced.

He saw none wounded like himself. Perhaps the wounded had been already
collected, perhaps they had crawled to shelter. Or perhaps he was the
only one against whom the Door had been closed. He had been left for
dead. He had nothing to live for. Yet it seemed that he could not die.

He looked at the man at his side lying wrapt in the aloofness of Death.
Poor devil! How horrible he looked, and how indifferent! A sense of
shuddering disgust came upon Piers. He wondered if he would die as
hideously.

Again the fountain mocked him softly from afar. Again the fiery torment
of his thirst awoke. He contemplated attempting to walk, but instinct
warned him against the risk of a headlong fall. He began with infinite
difficulty to crawl upon hands and knees.

His progress was desperately slow, the suffering it entailed was
sometimes unendurable. And always he knew that the blood was draining
from him with every foot of ground he covered. But ever that maddening
fountain lured him on...

The night had stretched into untold ages. He wondered if in his
frequent spells of unconsciousness he had somehow missed many days. He
had seen the moon swing half across the sky. He had watched with
delirious amusement the dead men rise to bury each other. And he had
spent hours in wondering what would happen to the last of them. His
head felt oddly light, as if it were full of air, a bubble of prismatic
colours that might burst into nothingness at any moment. But his body
felt as if it were fettered with a thousand chains. He could hear them
clanking as he moved.

But still that fountain with its marble basin seemed the end and aim of
his existence. Often he forgot to be thirsty now, but he never forgot
that he must reach the fountain before he died.

Sometimes his thirst would come back in burning spasms to urge him on,
and he always knew that there was a great reason for perseverance, always
felt that if he slackened he would pay a terrible penalty.

The fountain was very far away. He crawled along with ever-increasing
difficulty, marking the progress of his own shadow in th