Again Herne sought to raise himself, and with difficulty succeeded.  He could make out but little of his surroundings in the gloom, but it seemed to him that he was close to the spot where he had received his wound, for the murmur of the spring was still in his ears, and in the distance the yelling of the savages continued.  But he was faint and dizzy from pain and loss of blood, and his investigations did not carry him very far.  For a while he retained his consciousness, but presently slipped into a stupor of exhaustion, through which all outside influences soon failed to penetrate.

He dreamed after a time that Betty Derwent and he were sailing alone together on a stormy sea, striving eternally to reach an island where the sun shone and the birds sang, and being for ever flung back again into the howling waste of waters till, in agony of soul, they ceased to strive.

Then came the morning, all orange and gold, shining pitilessly down upon him, and he awoke to the knowledge that Betty was far away, and he was tossing alone on a sea that yet was no sea, but an endless desert of sand.  Intense physical pain dawned upon him at the same time, pain that was anguish, thrilling through every nerve, so that he pleaded feverishly for death, not knowing what he said.

No voice answered him.  No help came.  He rocked on and on in torment through the sandy desolation, seeing strange visions dissolve before his eyes, hearing sounds to which his tortured brain could give no meaning.  In the end, he lost himself utterly in the mazes of delirum, and all understanding ceased.

Long, long afterwards he came back as it were from a great journey, and knew that Hassan was waiting upon him, ministering to him, tending him as if he had been a child.  He was too weak for speech, almost too weak to open his eyes, but the life was still beating in his veins.  It was the turn of the tide.

Wearily he dragged himself back from the endless waste in which he had wandered, back to sanity, back to the problems of life.  Hassan smiled upon him as a mother upon her infant, being not without cause for self-congratulation on his own account.

“The effendi is better,” he said.  “He will sleep and live.”

And Herne slept, as a child sleeps, for many hours.

He awoke towards sunset to hear sounds that made him marvel—­the cheerful clatter of a camp, the voices of men, the protests of camels.

It took him back to that last evening he had spent in contact with civilization, the evening he had finally set himself to conquer the unknown, in answer to a voice that called.  How much of that mission had he accomplished, he asked himself?  How far was he even yet from his goal?

He gazed with drawn brows at the narrow walls of the tent in which he lay, and presently, a certain measure of strength returning to him, he raised himself on his sound arm and looked about him.