Suddenly the arms that bore him swung back.  He knew instinctively that they were preparing to hurl him into the heart of the fire, and the instinct of self-preservation rushed upon him, stabbing him to vivid consciousness.  With a gigantic effort he writhed himself free from their hold.

He fell headlong, but the strength of madness had entered into him.  He fought like a man possessed, straining at his bonds till they cracked and burst, forcing from his parched throat sounds which in saner moments he would not have recognized as human, struggling, tearing, raging, in furious self-defence.

He was hopelessly outmatched.  The odds were such as no man in his senses could have hoped to combat with anything approaching success.  Almost before his bonds began to loosen, his enemies were upon him again.  They hoisted him up, fighting like a maniac.  They tightened his bonds unconcernedly, and prepared for a second attempt.

But, before it could be made, a fierce yell rang suddenly from the cliffs above them, echoing weirdly through the savage pandemonium, arresting, authoritative, piercingly insistent.

What it portended Herne had not the vaguest notion, but its effect upon the two Wandis who held him was instant and astounding.  They dropped him like a stone, and fled as if pursued by furies.

As for Herne, he wriggled and writhed from the vicinity of the fire, still working at his bonds, his one idea to reach the water that he knew was running within a stone’s throw of him.  It was an agonizing progress, but he felt no pain but that awful, consuming thirst, knew no fear but a ghastly dread that he might fail to reach his goal.  For a single mouthful of water at that moment he would have bartered his very soul.

His breathing came in great gasps.  The sweat was running down his face.  His heart beat thickly, spasmodically.  His senses were tottering.  But he clung tenaciously to the one idea.  He could not die with his thirst unquenched.  If he crawled every inch of the way upon his stomach, he would somehow reach the haven of his desire.

There came the padding of feet upon the sand close to him, and he cursed aloud and bitterly.  It was death this time, of course.  He shut his eyes and lay motionless, waiting for it.  He only hoped that it might be swift; that the hellish torture he was suffering might be ended at a blow.

But no blow fell.  Hands touched him, severed his bonds, dragged him roughly up.  Then, as he staggered, powerless for the moment to stand, an arm, hard and fleshless as the arm of a skeleton, caught him and urged him forward.  Irresistibly impelled, he left the glare of the fire, and stumbled into deep shadow.

Ten seconds later he was on his knees by a natural basin of rock in which clear water brimmed, plunged up to the elbows, and drinking as only a man who has known the thirst of the desert can drink.

V