Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/170

 dense black hue of congestion on his temples the great, swollen veins stood out like black cords, distended and throbbing almost to the bursting point; and presently from his nostrils there trickled slowly a sluggish, dark hemorrhage.

Yet they racked on, pursuers and pursued, the hunters and the hunted, the quick and the dead—a nightmare-like vision of a dead man fleeing with his beloved from a ruthless and vengeful mob of fiends; all in that day of brass and fire.

Alarmed by the crackling of the Tawarek rifles, the imperial guard of Leopold le Premier, l'Empereur du Sahara, suddenly emerged in force and checked the pursuit.

But when they picked up the corpse-like body of O'Rourke and bore him back into the cool recesses of the oasis, they quite failed to recognize their leader; nor, possibly, would they ever have done so, save by processes of deduction—for he was quite unrecognizable—had not Madame la Princesse revived sufficiently to breathe to her brother a fragmentary account of the manner of her rescue.