Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/167

 it began to move briskly, gathered impetus, and was going at racing speed, the Irishman running by its side, half pulled along by the loop from the surcingle. In the beginning he managed fairly well. But the long slope to the rim of the saucer made fearful demands upon the reserve of air that he held in his great chest. He reached the rim, crossed it half fainting, getting his breath hardly.

Beyond it was not so bad; there was a grateful downward grade, along which he sprang, carried partly by his own momentum; the speed of the dromedary became terrific. It was excited by the commotion in the rear; evidently the Tawareks had come upon the body of their dead leader, Ibeni. Long, wailing howls conquered the silence itself, overpowering as that was, filling the void between heaven and earth with nerve-racking, long-drawn wails of lamentation and grief and rage, punctuated with ominous rifle shots.

These acted upon the dun racer as a stimulant; it lowered its long, scrawny neck until it seemed that its head almost touched the sands; and stretched out its slim, knobby legs, rocking from right to left like a ship in a heavy sea, devouring fathoms of the desert at a stride.

Its motion robbed madame of strength; she shut her eyes, struggling with the nausea induced upon the novice by camel riding. Thus she could not see O'Rourke; it was as well.

Two miles they covered, ere his breath began to give out. The hot sands burnt through the soles of his shoes, the sun above seemed to strike into his body piercingly, to the very core of the man. He struggled on: better to die thus than to become a goal for Tawarek bullets. His arm through the loop aided him wonderfully; the dun racer sped fleetly, as though it were not dragging a weary load of man in addition to the burden of the woman.