“Why don’t you kill white men?” he said.

But the question was treated with a silence that felt contemptuous.

The glow without was fading swiftly, and the darkness was creeping up like a curtain over the desert.  The weird figure standing upright against the door-flap seemed to take on a deeper mystery, a silence more unfathomable.

Herne began to feel as if he were in a dream.  If the man had not spoken he would have wondered if his very presence were but hallucination.

He gathered his wits for another effort.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you never use white men as slaves?”

Still that uncompromising silence.

Herne persevered.

“Three years ago, before the Wandis conquered the Zambas, there was a white man, an Englishman, who placed himself at their head, and taught them to fight.  I am here to seek him.  I shall not leave without news of him.”

“The Englishman is dead!” It was as if a mummy uttered the words.  The speaker neither stirred nor looked at Herne.  He seemed to be gazing into space.

Herne waited for more, but none came.

“I want proof of his death,” he said, speaking very deliberately.  “I must know beyond all doubt when and how he died.”

“The Englishman was burned with the other captives,” the slow, indifferent voice went on.  “He died in the fire!”

“What?” said Herne, with violence.  “You devil!  I don’t believe it!  I thought you did not kill white men!”

“He was not as other white men,” came the unmoved reply.  “The Wandis feared his magic.  Fire alone can destroy magic.  He died slowly but—­he died!”

“You devil!” Herne said again.

His hand was fumbling feverishly at his bandaged shoulder.  He scarcely knew what he was doing.  In his impotent fury he sought only for freedom, not caring how he obtained it.  Never in the whole of his life had he longed so overpoweringly to crush a man’s throat between his hands.

But his strength was unequal to the effort.  He sank back, gasping, half-fainting, yet struggling fiercely against his weakness.  Suddenly he was aware of the blood welling up to his injured shoulder.  He knew in an instant that the wound had burst out afresh; knew, too, that the bandage would be of no avail to check the flow.

“Fetch Hassan!” he jerked out.

But the man before him made no movement to obey.

“Are you going to stand by, you infernal fiend, and watch me die?” Herne flung at him.

A thick mist was beginning to obscure his vision, but it seemed to him that those last words of his took effect.  Undoubtedly the man moved, came nearer, stooped over him.

“Go!” Herne gasped.  “Go!”

He could feel the blood soaking through the bandage under his hand, spreading farther every instant.

This was to be the end, then, to lie at the mercy of this madman till death came to blot out all his efforts, all his hopes.  He made a last feeble effort to stanch that deadly flow, failed, sank down exhausted.