He was recalling, as in a nightmare, his frenzied battle for life, clinging to the inflated goat-skin—­the whirl and thunder of unseen cataracts in the blind dark—­the confusion of deafening, incomprehensible violences.

He was bringing back to mind the long, swift, smooth rushing of mighty waters through midnight caverns where echoes had told of a rock-roof close above; then, after an indeterminate time of horror that might have been minutes or hours, a weltering maelstrom of leaping waters—­a graying of light on swift-fleeing walls; a sudden up-boiling gush of the strangling flood that whelmed him—­and all at once a glare of sun, a river broadening out through palm-groves far beyond the Iron Mountains.

All these things, blurred, unreal, heartshaking as evil visions of fever, the Master was remembering.  Then came other happenings:  a long drift with resistless currents, the strange phenomenon of the lessening stream that dwindled as thirsty sands absorbed it, and the ceasing of the palms.

Last of all, the river had diminished to a shallow, tortuous delta, where the Master’s numbed feet had touched bottom.  There he had dragged himself ashore, with his goatskin, far more dead than living.  And there, for a time he knew not, consciousness had wholly ceased.

A dull, toneless voice sounded in the Master’s ears.  Bohannan was speaking.

“Faith, but it’s strange how even the five of us found each other, out there in the sand,” said the major.  “What happened to the rest of us, God knows—­maybe!” He choked, coughed, added:  “Or to the boys with Nissr.  God rest their souls!  I wish I had a sackful of that wine!” After a long pause:  “Don’t you, now?  What?”

The Master gave no heed.  He was trying to ease the position in which the woman was lying.  His jacket was off, now, and he was folding it to put under her head.

At his touch, she opened vague eyes.  She smiled with dry lips, and put his hand away.

“No, no!” she protested.  “No special favors for me!  I’m not a woman, remember.  I’m ‘Captain Alden,’ still—­only a Legionary!”

“But—­”

“If you favor me in any way, to the detriment of any of the others or your own, I won’t go on!  I’m just one of you.  Just one of the survivors, on even terms with the rest.  It’s give-and-take.  I mean that!  You’ve got to understand me!”

The Master nodded.  He knew that tone.  Silently he put on his jacket, again.

The lieutenant’s orderly, Lebon, groaned and muttered a prayer to the Virgin.  Leclair sat up, heavily, and blinked with sand-inflamed eyes.

“Time to drink again, n’est-ce pas, my Captain?” asked he.  “Drink to the dead!”

“I hope they are dead, rather than prisoners!” exclaimed the Master.  “Yes, we’ll drink, and get forward.  We’ve got to make long strides, tonight.  Those Jannati Shahr devils may be after us, tomorrow.  Surely will, if they investigate that delta and find only a few bodies.  They’ll conclude some of us have got through.  And if they pick up our trail, with those white dromedaries of theirs—­”