eemed to have taken on the arid
nature of the desert. Before they sat down Dicky had put the bottle of
whiskey out of easy reach; for Fielding, under ordinary circumstances
the most abstemious of men, had lately, in his great fatigue and
overstrain, unconsciously emptied his glass more often than was wise for
a campaign of long endurance. Dicky noticed now, as they sat round the
table, that Norman's hand went to the coffee-pot as Fielding's had gone
to his glass. What struck him as odd also was that Fielding seemed to
have caught something of Norman's manner. There was the same fever in
the eyes, though Norman's face was more worn and the eyes more sunken.
He looked like a man that was haunted. There was, too, a certain air of
helplessness about him, a primitive intensity almost painful. Dicky saw
Fielding respond to this in a curious way--it was the kind of fever that
passes quickly from brain to brain when there is not sound bodily health
commanded by a cool intelligence to insulate it. Fielding had done the
work of four men for over two months, and, like most large men, his
nerves had given in before Dicky's, who had done six men's work
at least, and, by his power of organisation and his labour-saving
intelligence, conserved the work of another fifty.

The three were sitting silent, having arranged certain measures, when
Norman sprang to his feet excitedly and struck the table with his hand.

"It's no use, sir," he said to Fielding, "I'll have to go. I'm no good.
I neglect my duty. I was to be back at Abdallah at five. I forgot
all about it. A most important thing. A load of fessikh was landed at
Minkari, five miles beyond Abdallah. We've prohibited fessikh. I was
going to seize it. ... It's no good. It's all so hopeless here."

Dicky knew now that the beginning of the end had come for Norman. There
were only two things to do: get him away shooting somewhere, or humour
him here. But there was no chance for shooting till things got very
much better. The authorities in Cairo would never understand, and
the babbling social-military folk would say that they had calmly gone
shooting while pretending to stay the cholera epidemic. It wouldn't be
possible to explain that Norman was in a bad way, and that it was done
to give him half a chance of life.

Fielding also ought to have a few days clear away from this constant
pressure and fighting, and the sounds and the smells of death; but it
could not be yet. Therefore, to hu