All
was vague mystery--a mystery ready at any second, at any slightest
alarm, to blaze out death upon them.
None the less, stout-hearted and firm of purpose, they serpented their
painful way prone on the hot, dusty bosom of the Sahara. Fate for them
and for all the Legion, lay on so slight a thing as the stirring of
a twig, the _tunk_ of a boot against a bleached camel's skull, the
possibility of a sneeze or cough.
Even the chance scaring-up of a hyena or a vagrant jackal might betray
them. Every breath, every heartbeat was pregnant with contingencies of
life and death.
Groveling, they slipped forward, dim, moving shadows in a world of
brown obscurity. At any moment, one might lay a hand on a sleeping
puff-adder or a scorpion. But even that had been fore-reckoned. All
three of them had thought of such contingencies and weighed them.
Not one but had determined to suppress any possible outcry, if thus
stricken, and to die in absolute silence.
What mattered death for one, if two should win to the close range
necessary for discharging the lethal capsules? What mattered it even
for two, if one should succeed? The survivors, or the sole survivor,
would simply take the weapons from the stricken and proceed.
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