Laden as they
were, they could barely shuffle one foot after the other. But blessed
lapses of consciousness now and then relieved their agony.
Conscious or not, the life within them drove them onward, ever onward;
slow, crawling things that all but blindly moved across the land of
death, _La Siwa Hu_--"where there is none but Allah."
CHAPTER LI
TORTURE
How that day passed, they knew not. Nature is kind. When agony grows
too keen, the All-mother veils the tortured body with oblivion.
Over blood-colored stretches swept by the volcano-breath of the
desert, through acacia barrens and across basaltic ridges the two
lonely figures struggled on and on. They fell, rested, slept a
nightmare sleep under the furious heat, got up again and dragged
themselves once more along.
Now they were conscious of plains all whitened with saltpeter, now of
scudding sand-pillars--wind-_jinnee_ of the Empty Abodes--that danced
and mocked them. Again, one or the other beheld paradisical, gleaming
lakes, afar.
But though they had lost the complete rationality that would have
bidden them lie quiet all day, and trek only at night, they still
remembered the pact of the mirages.
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