Monsoons of it falling recently!  A water-bottle full a few yards distant—­and he must die for want of a drop ...  What a complete circle the vultures made on the rocks and stunted trees of the sloping hill-side.  Oh, for a revolver!  A man ought to carry one on shikar expeditions.  One would give him a chance of life when under a tiger or panther—­and a chance of decent death in a position such as this.  Where had he read that vultures begin on the eyes of their prey?  Without awaiting its death either, so long as it could not defend itself.  There were other depraved gustatory preferences, too, if he remembered rightly-He would have an opportunity of testing the accuracy of the statement—­though not of assuring its author as to its correctness.

Water ...  Water ...  Water ...

Had he fainted again, that the vultures were so much nearer?...  Why should he be a second Prometheus?  Had he not had suffering enough in his life, without having more in his death?...  If the sending of a little water were too obvious a miracle, was it too much to ask that his next fainting and collapse might last long enough for the vultures to get to work, make a beginning, and an end?

Surely that would not be too great a miracle, since he had lain for years on a red-hot rock with blood in his mouth and his body wrecked like a smashed egg.  He must be practically dead.  Perhaps if he held his laboured breath and closed his eyes they would begin, and he would have the strength to keep still when they did so.  That would be the quickest way.  Once they started, it would not be long before his bones were cleaned.  No possible ghost of a chance of being saved.  Probably no human foot had been on these particular rocks since human feet existed.  Nor would he ever again have the strength to drag his shattered body to where the rifle lay.  Only a few yards away lay speedy happy release.

“No such thing as luck, Damocles.”

Perhaps the vultures thought otherwise.

Colonel John Decies, still of Bimariabad, but long retired on pension from the Indian Medical Service, was showing his mental and physical unfitness for the service of the Government that had ordered his retirement, by devoting himself at the age of fifty-nine to aviation—­aviation in the interests of the wounded on the battlefield.  What he wanted to live to see was a flying stretcher-service of the Royal Army Medical Corps that should flash to and fro at the rate of a hundred miles an hour between the rear of the firing-line and the field hospital and base hospital in aeroplanes built especially for the accommodation of wounded men—­an officer of the Corps accompanying each in the dual capacity of surgeon and potential pilot.  When he allowed his practical mind to wander among the vast possibilities of the distant future, he dreamed of bigger and bigger aeroplanes until they became fully equipped flying hospitals themselves, and removed the wounded from the danger zone to the nearest salubrious spot for their convalescence.  Meanwhile, he saw no reason why the more powerful biplanes should not carry an operating-table and all surgical accessories, a surgeon, and two or three wounded men who could not be made sitting-up cases.