Terence O'Rourke, Gentleman Adventurer
rian frontier, part of the time with the camel corps. He was cool-headed and clear-sighted—a man skilled in the ways of the desert, and acquainted with Tawarek methods of warfare.
Mahmud ordered affairs precisely as though he had been discharging the wishes of O'Rourke. He posted the pickets, charging them to increased vigilance throughout the day as well as during the night—though that were scarcely necessary, with the fate of their comrades ever in the minds of the men.
Drowsily the afternoon wore out its long, hot hours—hours punctuated by the cries of the far-swooping natives, by the calls of the pickets, and by an occasional bitter snap! as a Mauser cracked warning to some too ambitious or too daring Tawarek.
Madame had recovered; after a short interview with the nerveless and indifferent emperor—who stuck to his tent and to his champagne that was cooled by lowering the bottles to the bottom of the wells—Princess Beatrix had the unconscious Irishman conveyed to her own marquee, where, with the solitary assistance of a Spahi, she tended O'Rourke faithfully, doing what she might to restore his life to the man who had so nearly given it up to save her own.
But it seemed that there was not much she could do; and the fear that what she contrived for his comfort was all too inadequate struck into the heart of madame terribly—as nothing, not even the unhappiness of her married life, not even the almost maternal love she bore her scapegrace brother, had ever stirred her.
O'Rourke lay motionless as a log, scarce breathing for a time; he had passed into a coma of utter exhaustion. The sluggish blood seemed hardly to stir in his arteries; his pulse
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