Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/88

 in a cauldron of glowing metal, as though his body were being gradually, torturously burned alive. And yet in spite of everything, he did not sweat; every drop of moisture had evaporated from his body, until only a parched shell of fire remained. Ever and anon he was forced to burrow his way out of a mound of sand which had grown up above his head as though the grim Spirit of the Desert were bent on burying him alive. For hours the storm continued, raging as terrific as a tornado in the China Seas.

But bad as was the storm, its immediate effects were even worse, for when the horizon had cleared again, Andrea found his camel dead, and every drop of water evaporated in the water-bag. To describe the events that followed, one would have to be endowed with the genius of a Hugo. He was almost parched to ashes as a result of the storm, and yet he was a score of miles from Wadi-el-Gibli, with no promise of help in sight. The thought came to him that his position was as precarious as that of Mes'oodeh, of whom he was in search.

He laughed deliriously as he plunged indefinitely deeper into the desert. The sun grew hotter and hotter. It poured down upon his head, a torrent of liquid heat, until his very brain seemed bursting into fire. And then to add to his misfortunes, his helmet suddenly blew off, and as he pursued it drunkenly over the surging sand dunes, he lost all track of time. Sometimes it seemed almost within his grasp, but as he put out his hand to seize it, it would whirl beyond his reach. Insanely he plunged forward; reason had left him, only a dull determination to reach the hat remained in his mind. To his smarting, inflamed, sun-scorched eyes, the desert presented naught but a seething, blinding maze of light.

Eventually the end came. One lone man can not fight against the remorselessness of the desert. Suddenly everything went black before his eyes, the desert seemed to whirl dizzily about him. With a moan he crumpled up into a limp heap upon the sand, mercilessly trodden down by the sun which gives vent to its wildest passions in the intense solitude of the desert.

hours later, a woman, journeying over the desert alone, came upon him. Dismounting from her camel, she bathed his poor blistered face with a soothing balm, brushed the sand from his hair and tried to force a few drops of deliciously cool water through his cracked, blackened lips. Then abruptly she stooped and crushed her red, burning lips to his brow.

"I knew that he would come to me," she whispered, smiling cruelly. "Priest or no priest, I knew that he would come."

But what Mes'oodeh did not know was that Andrea Giovanni would have entered the desert to save her from death if she had been as black as ebony or as horrible to gaze upon as Ali, the blind Berber who begged for alms in the Arbar-Asat at Tripoli.

three days Andrea Giovanni lay semi-conscious and Mes'oodeh remained with him. By the hour she crooned love-songs which blended well with the strange stillness of the desert. Sometimes she twined her arms passionately around his neck and held her lovely face dose to his.

"Kiss me!" she murmured tensely. "Kiss me!"

And Andrea would kiss her as a child might kiss a parent. His brain seemed numbed by fever; he could not remember what had happened. He lay in a sort of semi-stupor.