devilish grin, inexpressibly malignant. It danced before his
starting eyes like some hideous spectre seen in delirium, intermittent,
terrible, with blinding flashes of light breaking between. He felt as if
his head were bursting. The agony of suffocation possessed him to the
exclusion of all else. There came a sudden glaze in his brain that was
like the shattering of every faculty, and then, in a blood-red mist, his
understanding passed.

It seemed to him when the light reeled back again that he had been
unconscious for a very long time. He awoke to excruciating pain, of
which he seemed to have been vaguely aware throughout, and found himself
bound hand and foot and slung across the back of a camel. He dangled
helplessly face downwards, racked by cramp and a fiery torment of thirst
more intolerable than anything he had ever known.

Darkness had fallen, but he caught the gleam of torches, and he knew
that he was surrounded by a considerable body of men. The ground they
travelled was stony and ascended somewhat steeply. Herne swung about
like a bale of goods, torn by his bonds, flung this way and that, and
utterly unable to protect himself in any way, or to ease his position.

He set his teeth to endure the torture, but it was so intense that he
presently fainted again, and only recovered consciousness when the
agonizing progress ceased. He opened his eyes, to find the camel that
had borne him kneeling, and he himself being bundled by two brawny
savages on to the ground. He fell like a log, and so was left. But,
bound though he was, the relief of lying motionless was such that he
presently recovered so far as to be able to look about him.

He discovered that he was lying in what appeared to be a huge
amphitheatre of sand, surrounded by high cliffs, ragged and barren, and
strewn with boulders. Two great fires burned at several yards' distance,
and about these, a number of savages were congregated. From somewhere
behind came the trickle of water, and the sound goaded him to something
that was very nearly approaching madness. He dragged himself up on to
his knees. His thirst was suddenly unendurable.

But the next instant he was flat on his face in the sand, struck down by
a blow on the back of the neck that momentarily stunned him. For a while
he lay prone, gritting the sand in his teeth; then again with the
strength of frenzy he struggled upwards.

He had a glimpse of his guard standing over him, and recognized the
s