To the strongest and sanest mind there is something a small trifle disturbing, perhaps, in riding silently hour after hour on a soft-footed camel over soft sand in a silent empty land through the moonlit silent night, beside an overland-telegraph wire on every individual post of which sits a huge vulture!... Just as the sun set, a fiery red ball, behind the distant mountains, Damocles de Warrenne, gentleman-at-large, had caught sight of what he had sought in the desert for some days, the said overland telegraph, and thereby saved himself from the highly unpleasant death that follows prolonged deprivation of water. He had also saved his camel from a little earlier death, inasmuch as he had decided to probe for the faithful creature's jugular vein and carotid artery during the torturing heats of the morrow and prolong his life at its expense. (Had he not promised Lucille to do his best for himself?)

The overland telegraph pointed absolutely straight to the border city of Kot Ghazi and, better still, to a river-bed which would contain pools of water, thirty miles this side of it, at a spot a few miles from which stood a lost lone dak-bungalow on Indian soil--a dak-bungalow whereat would be waiting a _shikarri_ retainer, and such things as tea, fuel, potted foods, possibly fresh meat, and luxury of luxuries, a hot bath....

And, with a sigh of relief, he had wheeled his camel under the telegraph wires after a glance at the stars and brief calculation as to whether he should turn to left or right. (He did not want to proceed until he collapsed under the realization that he was making for the troubled land of Persia.)

Anyhow, without knowing where he was, he knew he was on the road to water, food, human companionship (imagine Abdul Ghani a human companion!--but he had not seen a human face for three weeks, nor heard nor uttered a word), and safety, after suffering the unpleasant experience of wandering in circles, lost in the most inhospitable desert on the earth. Vultures! He had not realized there were so many in the world. Hour after hour, a post at every few yards, and on every post a vulture--a vulture that opened its eyes as he approached, regarded him from its own point of view--that of the Eater whose life is an unending search for Meat--calculatingly, and closed them again with a sigh at his remaining vigorousness.

He must have pa.s.sed hundreds, thousands,--had he died of thirst in actual fact and was he doomed to follow this line through this desert for evermore as a punishment for his sins? No--much too mild a punishment for the G.o.d of Love to inflict, according to the Chaplain.

This would be Eternal Bliss compared with the Eternal Fire. He must be still alive ... Was he mad, then, and _imagining_ these unending bird-capped posts? If not mad, he soon would be. Why couldn't they say something--mannerless brutes! Should he swerve off and leave the telegraph line? No, he had starved and suffered the agonies of thirst for nearly a week--and, if he could hang on all night, he might reach water tomorrow and be saved. Food was a minor consideration and if he could drink a few gallons of water, soak his clothes in it, lie in it,--he could carry on for another day or two. Nearly as easy to sprawl face-downward on a camel-saddle as on the ground--and he had tied himself on. The camel would rub along all right for days with camel-thorn and similar dainties.... No, better not leave the line.

Halt and camp within sight of it till the morning, when the brutes would fly away in search of food? No ... might find it impossible to get going again, if once man and beast lay down now ... Ride as far as possible from the line, keeping it in sight? No ... if he fell asleep the camel would go round in a circle again, and he'd wake up a dozen miles from the line, with no idea of direction and position. Best to carry straight on. The camel would stick to the line so long as he was left exactly on it ... think it a road ... He could sleep without danger thus. He would shut his eyes and not see the vultures, for if he saw a dozen more he knew that he would go raving mad, halt the camel and address an impa.s.sioned appeal to them to _say_ something--for G.o.d's sake to _say something_. Didn't they know that he had been in solitary confinement in a desert for three weeks or three centuries (what is time?) without hearing a sound or seeing a living thing--expecting the SNAKE night and day, and, moreover, that he was starving, dying of thirst, and light-headed, and that he was in the awful position of choosing between murdering the camel that had stood by him--no, under him--all that fearful time, and breaking his word to Lucille--cheating and deceiving Lucille. Then why couldn't they _say_ something instead of sitting there in their endless millions, mile after billions of miles, post after billions of trillions of posts--menacing, watchful, silent, silent as the awful desert, silent as the SNAKE.... This would not do ... he must think hard of Lucille, of the Sword, of his Dream, his Dream that came so seldom now. He would repeat Lucille's last letter, word for word:--

"MY DARLING,

"It is over, thank G.o.d--Oh, thank G.o.d--and you can leave the army at once and become a 'gentleman' in position as well as in fact. Poor old Grumper died on Sat.u.r.day (as I cabled) and before he died he became quite another man--weak, gentle and anxious to make any amends he could to anybody. For nearly a week he was like this, and it was a most wonderful and pathetic thing. He spent most of the time in telling me, General Harringport, Auntie Yvette or the Vicar, about wicked things he had done, cruelties, meannesses, follies--it was most distressing, for really he has been simply a strong character with all the faults of one--including, as we know too well, lack of sympathy, hardness, and sometimes savage cruelty, which, after all, was only the natural result of the lack of sympathy and understanding.

"As he grew weaker he grew more sympathetic with illness and suffering, I suppose, for he sent for me in the middle of the night to say that he had suddenly remembered Major Decies' story about your probably being subject to fits and seizures in certain circ.u.mstances, and that he was coming to the conclusion that he had been hasty and unjust and had unmercifully punished you for no fault whatever. He said 'I have punished him for being punished. I have added my injustice to that of Fate. Write to him that I ask his pardon and confess my fault. Tell him I'll make such reparation as I can,' and oh, Dam--he leaves _you_ Monksmead, and _me_ his money, on the understanding that we marry as soon as any physician, now living in Harley Street, says that you are fit to marry (I must write it I suppose) without fear of our children being epileptic, insane, or in any way tainted. If none of them will do this, I am to inherit Monksmead and part of the money and you are to have a part of the money. If we marry _then_, we lose everything and it goes to Haddon Berners. Mr. Wyllis, who has been his lawyer and agent for thirty years, is to take you to Harley Street (presumably to prevent your bribing and corrupting the whole of the profession there residing).

"Come at once, Darling. If the silly old physicians won't certify, why--what _does_ it matter? I am going to let lodgings at Monksmead to a Respectable Single Man (with board) and Auntie Yvette will see that he behaves himself.

"Cable what boat you start by and I'll meet you at Port Said. I don't know how I keep myself sitting in this chair. I could turn head over heels for joy! (And poor Grumper only just buried and his Will read!) He didn't lose quite all his grim humour in that wonderful week of softening, relenting and humanizing. What do you think he solemnly gave and bequeathed to the poor Haddock?

His _wardrobe_!!! And nothing else, but if the Haddock wears only Grumper's clothes, including his boots, shirts, ties, collars and everything else, for one full and complete year, and wears absolutely nothing else, he is to have five thousand pounds at the end of it--and he is to begin on the day after the funeral! And even at the last poor Grumper was a foot taller and a foot broader (not to mention _thicker_) than the Haddock! It appears that he systematically tried to poison Grumper's mind against you--presumably with an eye on this same last Will and Testament.

He hasn't been seen since the funeral. I wonder if he is going to try to win the money by remaining in bed for a year in Grumper's pyjamas!

"Am I not developing 'self-control and balance'?

Here I sit writing news to you while my heart is screaming aloud with joy, crying 'Dam is coming home. Dam's troubles are over. Dam is saved!'

Because if you are ever so 'ill,' Darling, there is nothing on earth to prevent your coming to your old home at once--and if we can't marry we can be pals for evermore in the dear old place of our childhood. But of _course_ we can marry. Hurry home, and if any Harley Street doctor gives you even a doubtful look, throw him up his own stairs to show how feeble you are, or tie his poker round his neck in a neat bow, and refuse to undo it until he apologizes. I'm sure you could! '_Ill_'

indeed! If you can't have a little fit, on the rare occasions when you see a snake, without fools saying you are ill or dotty or something, it is a pity! Anyhow there is one small woman who understands, and if she can't marry you she can at any rate be your inseparable pal--and if the Piffling Little World likes to talk scandal, in spite of Auntie Yvette's presence--why it will be amusing. Cable, Darling! I am just bursting with excitement and joy--and fear (that something may go wrong at the last moment). If it saved a single day I should start for Motipur myself at once. If we pa.s.sed in mid-ocean I should jump overboard and swim to your ship. Then you'd do the same, and we should 'get left,' and look silly....

Oh, what nonsense I am talking--but I don't think I shall talk anything else again--for sheer joy!

"You can't write me a lot of bosh _now_ about 'spoiling my life' and how you'd be ten times more miserable if I were your wife. Fancy--a soldier to-day and a 'landed proprietor' to-morrow! How I wish you were a _landed_ traveller, and were in the train from Plymouth--no, from Dover and London, because of course you'd come the quickest way. Did my cable surprise you very much?

"I enclose fifty ten-pound notes, as I suppose they will be quicker and easier for you to cash than those 'draft' things, and they'll be quite safe in the insured packet. Send a cable at once, Darling. If you don't I shall imagine awful things and perhaps die of a broken heart or some other silly trifle.

"Mind then:--Cable to-day; Start to-morrow; Get here in a fortnight--and keep a beady eye open at Port Said and Brindisi and places--in case there has been time for me to get there. Au revoir.

Darling Dam,

"Your

"LUCILLE.

"Three cheers! And a million more!"

Yes, a long letter, but he could almost say it backwards. He couldn't be anything like mad while he could do that?... How had she received his answer--in which he tried to show her the impossibility of any decent man compromising a girl in the way she proposed in her sweet innocence and ignorance. Of course _he_, a half-mad, epileptic, fiend-ridden monomaniac--nay, dangerous lunatic,--could not _marry_.

Why, he might murder his own wife under some such circ.u.mstances as those under which he attacked Captain Blake. (Splendid fellow Blake!

Not every man after such a handling as that would make it his business to prove that his a.s.sailant was neither drunk, mad, nor criminal--merely under a hallucination. But for Blake he would now be in jail, or lunatic asylum, to a certainty. The Colonel would have had him court-martialled as a criminal, or else have had him out of the regiment as a lunatic. Nor, as a dangerous lunatic, would he have been allowed to buy himself out when Lucille's letter and his money arrived. Blake had got him into the position of a perfectly sober and sane person whose mind had been temporarily upset by a night of horror--in which a coffin-quitting corpse had figured, and so he had been able to steer between the cruel rocks of Jail and Asylum to the blessed harbour of Freedom.)

Yes--in spite of Blake's n.o.ble goodness and help, Dam knew that he was _not_ normal, that he _was_ dangerous, that he spent long periods on the very border-line of insanity, that he stood fascinated on that border-line and gazed far into the awful country beyond--the Realms of the Mad....

Marry! Not Lucille, while he had the sanity left to say "No"!

As for going to live at Monksmead with her and Auntie Yvette--it would be an even bigger crime. Was it for _him_ to make _Lucille_ a "problem" girl, a girl who was "talked about," a by-word for those vile old women of both s.e.xes whose favourite pastime is the invention and dissemination of lies where they dare, and of even more damaging head-shakes, lip-pursings, gasps and innuendoes where they do not?

Was it for _him_ to get _Lucille_ called "The Woman Who Did," by those sc.u.m of the leisured cla.s.ses, and "That peculiar young woman," by the better sort of matron, dowager and chaperone,--make her the kind of person from whose company careful mothers keep their innocent daughters (that their market price may never be in danger of the faintest depreciation when they are for sale in the matrimonial market), the kind of woman for whom men have a slightly and subtly different manner at meet, hunt-ball, dinner or theatre-box? Get Lucille "talked about"?

No--setting aside the question of the possibility of living under the same roof with her and conquering the longing to marry.

No--he had some decency left, tainted as he doubtless was by his barrack-room life.

Tainted of course.... What was it he had heard the senior soldierly-looking man, whom the other addressed as "General," say concerning some mutual acquaintance, at breakfast in the dining-car going up to Kot Ghazi?

"Yes, poor chap, was in the ranks--and no man can escape the barrack-room taint when he has once lived in it. Take me into any Officers' Mess you like--say 'There is a promoted gentleman-ranker here,' and I'll lay a thousand to one I spot him. Don't care if he's the son of a Dook--nor yet if he's Royal, you can spot him alright...."

Pleasant hearing for the "landed proprietor," whom a beautiful, wealthy and high-bred girl proposed to marry!

Tainted or not, in that way--he was _mentally_ tainted, a fact beside which the other, if as true as Truth, paled into utterest insignificance.

No--he had taken the right line in replying to Lucille that he was getting worse mentally, that no doctor would dream of "vetting" him "sound," that he was not scoundrel enough to come and cause scandal and "talk" at Monksmead, and that he was going to disappear completely from the ken of man, wrestle with himself, and come to her and beg her to marry him directly he was better--sufficiently better to "pa.s.s the doctor," that is. If, meanwhile, she met and loved a man worthy of her, such a man as Ormonde Delorme, he implored her to marry him and to forget the wholly unworthy and undesirable person who had merely loomed large upon her horizon through the accident of propinquity ...

(He could always disappear again and blow out such brains as he possessed, if that came to pa.s.s, he told himself.)

Meanwhile letters to the Bank of Bombay would be sent for, at least once a year--but she was not to write--she was to forget him. As to searching for him--he had not quite decided whether he would walk from Rangoon to Pekin or from Quetta to Constantinople--perhaps neither, but from Peshawur to Irkutsk. Anyhow, he was going to hide himself pretty effectually, and put himself beyond the temptation of coming and spoiling her life. Sooner or later he would be mad, dead, or cured. If the last--why he would make for the nearest place where he could get news of her--and if she were then happily married to somebody else--why--why--she _would_ be happy, and that would make him quite happy ...

Had the letter been quite sane and coherent--or had he been in a queer mental state when he wrote it?...

He opened his eyes, saw a vulture within a few yards of him, closed them again, and, soon after, fell into an uneasy slumber as the camel padded on at a steady seven miles an hour unurged--save by the _smell_ of pure clear water which was still a score of miles distant....

When Damocles de Warrenne awoke, he was within a few hundred yards of the nearly dry River Helnuddi, where, failing occasional pools, the traveller can always procure water by digging and patiently awaiting the slow formation of a little puddle at the bottom of the hole.

For a minute he halted. Should he dig while he had strength, or should he turn to the left and follow the river-bed until he came to a pool--or could go no farther? Perhaps he would be too weak to dig, though, by that time.... Remarkable how eager to turn to the left and get on, the camel was--considering how tired he must be--perhaps he could smell distant water or knew of a permanent pool hereabouts.

Well, let that decide it....

An hour later, as the camel topped a rise in the river-bank, a considerable pool came into view, tree-shaded, heron-haunted, too incredibly beautiful and alluring for belief. Was it a mirage?...

A few minutes later, Damocles de Warrenne and his camel were drinking, and a few hours later entered the dreary featureless compound of a wretched hovel, which, to the man at least, was a palatial and magnificent asylum (no, not _asylum_--of all words)--refuge and home--the more so that a camel knelt chewing in the shade of the building, and a man, Abdul Ghani himself, lay slumbering in the verandah....

"You understand, then," said Dam in the vernacular, to the malodorous, hideous, avaricious Abdul who reappeared from Kot Ghazi a few days later, "you return here again, one week from to-day, bringing the things written down on this paper, from the shop of Rustomji at Kot Ghazi. Here you wait until I come. If I find there is truth in your _khubbar_[27] of ibex you will be rewarded ... Why don't I take you?

Because I want to be alone. Set out now for Kot Ghazi. I may return." A stone fell and clattered. Dam shrank, cringed, and shut his eyes--as one expecting a heavy blow. _Ah-h-h-h-h_--had the beast bolted? With the slowness of an hour-hand he raised his head above the bank of the watercourse until his eye cleared the edge. _No_--still there. After a painful crawl that seemed to last for hours, he reached the point where the low ridge ran off at right-angles, crept behind it, and lay flat on his face, to rest and recover breath. He was soaked in perspiration from head to foot, giddy with sun and unnatural posture, very sore as to elbows and knees, out of breath, trembling--and entirely happy. The half-mile crawl, with the greater part of his body on the burning ground, and the rifle to shuffle steadily along without noise or damage, was the equivalent of a hard day's work to a strong man. At the end of it he lay gasping and sick, aching in every limb, almost blind with glare and over-exertion, weary to death--and entirely happy. Thank G.o.d he would be able to stand up in a moment and rest behind a big cactus. Then he would have a spell of foot-work for a change, and, though crouching double, would not be doing any crawling until he had crossed the plateau and reached the bushes.

The upward climb was successfully accomplished with frequent halts for breath, behind boulders. On the plateau all that was required was silence. The ibex could not see him up there. In his rubber-soled khaki-coloured shoes he could almost run, but it was a question whether a drink of cold water would not be worth more than all the ibexes in the world.

He tip-toed rapidly across the level hill-top, reached the belt of low bushes, dropped, and lay to recover breath before resuming the painful and laborious crawling part of his journey. Was it possible to tap one's tongue against one's teeth and hear the noise of it as though it were made of wood? It seemed so. Was this giddiness and dimness of vision sunstroke? What would he give to have that fly (that had followed him for hundreds of thousands of miles that morning) between his fingers?

Last lap! There was the rock, and below it must be the quarry--if it had not fled. He must keep that rock between himself and his prey and he must get to it without a sound. It would be easy enough without the rifle. Could he stick it through his belt and along his back, or trail it behind him? What nonsense! He must be getting a touch of sun. Would these stones leave marks of burns on his clothes? Surely he could smell himself singeing. Enough to explode the rifle ... The big rock at last! A rest and then a peep, with infinite precaution. Dam held his breath and edged his face to the corner of the great boulder.

Moving imperceptibly, he peeped ... _No ibex!_ ... He was about to spring up with a hearty malediction on his luck when he perceived a peculiar projection on a large stone some distance down the hill. It moved--and Dam dropped back. It must be the top of the curve of one of the horns of the ibex and the animal must be lying down.... What to do? It might lie for hours and he himself might go to sleep. It might get up and depart at any moment without coming into the line of fire--without being seen indeed. Better continue the stalk and hope to get a standing shot, or, failing that, a running one.

It looked a nasty descent, since silence was essential--steep, slippery, and strewn with round stones. Anyhow, he could go down on his feet, which was something to be thankful for, as it was agony to put a knee or elbow to the ground. He crept on.