CHAPTER XIV.

THE SNAKE AND THE SWORD.

The dak-bungalow again at last!  But how terribly dreary, depressing, and horrible it looked now—­the hut that had once seemed a kind of heaven on earth to the starving wanderer.  Then, Lucille was thousands of miles away (geographically, and millions of miles away in imagination).  Now, she was but thirty miles away—­and it was almost more than human endurance could bear....  Should he turn back even now, ride straight to Kot Ghazi, fall at her feet and say:  “I can struggle no longer.  Come back to Monksmead—­and let what will be, be.  I have no more courage.”

And go mad, one day, and kill her?  Keep sane, and sully her fair name?  On to the hovel.  Rest for the night, and, at dawn, strike into the desert and there let what will be, be.

Making the camel kneel, Damocles de Warrenne removed its saddle, fastened its rein-cord tightly to a post, fed it, and then detached the saddle-bags that hung flatly on either side of the saddle frame, as well as a patent-leather sword-cover which contained a sword of very different pattern from that for which it had been made.

Entering the hut, of which the doors and windows were bolted on the outside, he flung open the shutters of the glassless windows, lit a candle, and prepared to eat a frugal meal.  From the saddlebags he took bread, eggs, chocolate, sardines, biscuits and apples.  With a mixture of permanganate of potash, tea and cold water from the well, if the puddle at the bottom of a deep hole could be so termed, he made a drink that, while drinkable by one who has known worse, was unlikely to cause an attack upon an enfeebled constitution, of cholera, enteric, dysentery or any other of India’s specialities.  What would he not have given for a clean whisky-and-soda in the place of the nauseating muck—­but what should be the end of a man who, in his position, turned to alcohol for help and comfort?  “The last state of that man ...”

After striking a judicious balance between what he should eat for dinner and what he should reserve for breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests.  Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel of the Indian Medical Service “pinched” them for splints.) A most depressing human habitation even for the most cheerful and care-free of souls, a terrible place for a man in a dangerous mental state of unstable equilibrium and cruel agony....  Only thirty miles away—­and a camel at the door. Lucille still within a night’s ride.