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--"
"The sacred pigs!" ejaculated Leclair. "Ah, _messieurs_, now you begin
to know the Arabs as I have long known them." With eyes of hate and
pain he peered back at the darkening line of the Iron Mountains.
Bohannan, already loosening the neck of his goat-skin, laughed
hoarsely.
"No wine!" he croaked, "and the water's rationed; even the stinking
water.
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