Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/349

 was trying to save, under the hot morning sun of an open and unprotected country. They were stranded on a slope of yellow ballast-sand, face to face with a guerilla army that would refuse them quarter, under the walls of a beleaguered city that would decline to admit them. Yes, he had asked too much of Fate. There was nothing left to him, now, but to fight it out, fight it out to a finish.

The next clearly defined thought that came to him was that he was burning with thirst. Before everything else, he felt, he must have water. And there remained only one hope of water. That was the little stream two hundred yards behind them, the flashing little ribbon of blue over which De Brigard's men would be swarming at any moment.

There was no time to be lost. His first task was to make his way to that stream and back—to fight his way there and back, if need be. He could not hold out, he knew, without water.

He dodged and peered and groped about the overturned car, in feverish search for anything that would hold water. That hurried search seemed a hopeless one, until his eyes fell on a battered gasoline-can of galvanised tin, stowed away under the seat-frame. He got the screw-top off its cover, in some way, and let its contents bubble out on the yellow sand as he swung