After a little consideration, he awakened the woman
and Lebon.
The verdict on Bohannan was madness, mirage, desertion.
For two days the major had been babbling of wine and water, been
beholding things that were not, been hurling jewels at imaginary
vultures. Now, well, the desert had got him.
To pursue would have been insanity. They got the two remaining camels
up, by dint of furious beating and of hoarse eloquence in Arabic
from the Master and Lebon. Once more, knowing themselves doomed, they
pushed into the eye of the flaming west, over the savage gorgeousness
of the Empty Abodes. In less than an hour the double-laden camel fell
to its knees and incontinently died.
Lebon dismounted from the one surviving animal, and stepped fair into
a scorpion's nest. The horrible little gray creature, striking up over
its back with spiked tail, drove the deadly barb half an inch into the
orderly's naked ankle.
The Master scarified, sucked, and cauterized the wound. Nothing
availed. Lebon, in his depleted condition, could not fight off the
poison. Thirty minutes later, swollen and black, he died in a frothing
spasm, his last words a hideous imprecation on the Arabs who had
enslaved and tortured him-a curse on the whole race of Moslems.
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