And since never both beheld the
same lake, they held each other from the fatal madness that had slain
Bohannan.
Their only speech was when discussing the allurements of beckoning
waters which were but air.
At nightfall, toiling up over the lip of a parched, chalky _nullah_
that sunset turned to amethyst, a swarm of howling Arabs suddenly
attacked them. The Master flung himself down, and fired away all
his ammunition, in frenzy. The woman, catching his contagion, did
likewise.
No shots came back; and suddenly the Arabs vanished from the man's
sight. When he stumbled forward to the place where they had been, he
discovered no dead bodies, not even a footprint.
Nothing was there but a clump of acacias, their twisted thorns parched
white. They had been shooting at only fantasms of their own brains.
Now, even the mercy-bullets were gone.
Bitterly the man cursed himself, as he thrust the now useless pistol
back into its holster. The woman, however, smiled with dry lips, and
from her belt took out a little, flattened piece of lead--the bullet
which, fired at _Nissr_ from near the Ka'aba, had fallen at her feet
and been picked up by her as a souvenir.
Pages:
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509