He Races with Death
and his lungs were like twin crucibles brimming with molten metal.
An inquisition could have devised no torture more sublime; practically the man was already dead; only that something which was death-defying in his make-up, that determination almost superhuman, held him upon his feet, and kept those digging into the sand and spurning it to the rear, in time to the rocking of the dun racer.
Before them, after many ages had crashed on into infinity,, loomed the green walls of El Kebr. Behind, the Tawareks had drawn so nigh that they were encouraged to take pot-shots that flew wide and far because of the staggering pace of their own camels; the which made aiming impossible, a hit a miracle.
But of all this neither of the fugitives comprehended aught; the woman had passed into a merciful unconsciousness and had slipped forward in her fastenings upon the saddle of the dromedary, jerking back and forth and from side to side, mechanically, with a flaccid and puppet-like motion horribly suggestive of a lifeless thing.
O'Rourke plunged still on, as automatically, knowing nothing, more than anything else imaginable resembling a dead man mocking the action of the living. His eyes stood wide open and seemed to glare downwards at the streaking desert sands—that were not sands but fire solidified, even as the air was not atmosphere, but fire pure and immaculate; but the staring eyeballs were fixed and sightless, spheres of exquisite pain in their sockets, caked like his tongue with the impalpable sand drift of the desert. His ears were filled with a thundering that rolled ever louder and stronger and more maddening. The color of his face had gone from ruddy bronze to scarlet, from scarlet to purple, and from purple had merged into the
[ 159 ]
