In silence, all plodded on, on, toward the bleeding sphere that, now oblate through flaming mists, was mercifully sinking to rest.  No look of surprise marked the face of any man, that “Captain Alden” was in reality a woman.  The Legionaries’ anguish, the numbing, brutalizing effects of their recent experience had been too great for any minor emotions to endure.  They had accepted this fact like all others, as one of a series of incredible things that had, none the less, been true.

For a certain time the remnant of the Legion dragged itself south-westward, panting, gasping, wasting no breath in speech.  Leclair was first to utter words.

“Let us rest a little while, mon capitaine,” said he in a hoarse, choking voice.  “Rest, and drink again.  I know the desert.  Many hundreds of miles lie between us and the coast.  Nothing can be gained by hastening, at first.  All may be lost.  Let us rest, at all events, until that cursed sun has set!”

In silence the Master cast down his water-bag, at the bottom of the little, desolate valley of gravel through which the fugitives were now toiling.  All did the same, and all sat down—­or rather, fell—­upon the hot earth.

Very different, now, this land was from what it had seemed as they had soared above it, at cool altitudes, in the giant air-liner; very different from the cool, green plain of El Barr, behind the grim black line of the Iron Mountains now a dim line off to eastward.

The sprawling collapse of the Legionaries told more eloquently than any words the exhaustion that already, after only four hours’ trek, was strangling the life out of them.

For a while they lay there motionless, unthinking, brutalized by fatigue and pain.  With their present condition as an earnest of what was yet to come, what hope had any that even one of them would live to behold the sparkle of the distant Red Sea?  Even though unmolested by pursuit from Jannati Shahr or by attack from any wandering tribes of the Black Tent People, what hope could there be?

Gradually some coherence of thought returned to the Master.  He sat up, painfully, and blinked with reddened eyes at the woman.  She was lying beside her water-bag, seemingly asleep.  The Master’s face drew into lines of anguish as he looked at her.

With bruised fingers he loosened the thong of his own water-bag, and tore still another strip from his remnant of shirt.  He poured a little of the precious water on to this rag, lashed the water-sack tight again, and with the warm, wet rag bathed the woman’s face, brow, and throat.

Her closed lids did not open.  No one paid any attention.  No one even stirred.  The cloth grew dry, almost at once, as the thirsty air absorbed its moisture.  The Master pocketed it.  Elbows on knees, head between hands, he sat there pondering.

In thought he was living over again the incredible events of the past hours, as they had been presented to his own experience.  He was remembering the frightful, dizzying plunge down the black pit into the steaming waters of the River of Night—­waters which, had they been but a few degrees hotter, would incontinently have ended everything on the instant.