But they still kept organization and coherence. Still, guided by
the stars that burned with ardent trembling in the black sky, they
followed their chosen course.
Morning heat-mist, noontide glare, wind like a beast with flaming
breath, a sky terrible in its stainless beauty, an inescapable
sun-furnace that seemed to boil the brains in their skulls--all these
and the mockery of mirages that made every long white line of salt
efflorescence a lake of cooling waters, brought the four tortured
Legionaries close to death.
Awaking toward evening of the fifth day, the Master discovered one of
the three camels gone--the one on which he had been riding with the
woman, lest she fall fainting to the sand. With this camel, Major
Bohannan had likewise disappeared. His big-shouldered, now emaciated
figure in its dirty-white burnous was nowhere visible. Only prints of
soft hoof-pads, leading off to north-eastward, betrayed the line of
flight.
The Master pondered a while as he sat there, dazed, blinking at the
desert all purple, gold, and tawny-red. His inflamed eyes, stubbly
beard and gaunt cheeks made him a caricature of the man he had been,
ten days before.
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