Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/174

 "I have none—"

"Monsieur!"

Mahmud caught the little Frenchman by the back of the neck and shook him as a terrier does a rat. "The opium!" he demanded, releasing Mouchon. A third appeal was not necessary. The frightened fellow produced his little phial of white tablets. Mahmud saluted ceremoniously and left, returning to the tent of the princess.

Respectfully he requested her to withdraw, and to allow him and the Spahi time to operate on O'Rourke. She refused calmly, and he acquiesced as calmly and accepted her assistance in the dosing of O'Rourke with morphine and in something that was a worse trial to the nerves of the delicate woman—blood letting. A vein was opened in O'Rourke's arm; it saved his life.

Evening brought with it a breeze—the cold breeze that springs up, unaccountably, out of the sands. It helped. By nine in the evening O'Rourke was breathing more freely; he was perspiring slightly; his temperature was lower, his face of a color more nearly normal.

At midnight the woman was shivering with the cold; O'Rourke, at whose side she sat, was aflame with fever—but perspiring. He was saved.

Towards morning he moved for the first time since he had fallen at the end of his terrific run; he stirred, moaned, shut his mouth, opened his eyes—they were staring horribly—and began to babble.

The ripple of the words born of his febrile hallucinations and of the action of the opium upon his overstrained brain, was as music to the soul of madame. For a little while she bowed her head upon her arms and wept for happiness.