It was then that a voice came to him out of the gathering darkness, quick and urgent, speaking to him, as it were, across the gulf of years: 

“Monty, Monty, lie still, man!  I’ll see to you!”

That voice recalled Herne, renewed his failing faculties, galvanized him into life.  The man with the mummy’s hands was bending over him, stripping away the useless bandage, fashioning it anew for the moment’s emergency.  In a few seconds he was working at it with pitiless strength, twisting and twisting again till the tension told, and Herne forced back a groan.

But he clung to consciousness with all his quivering strength, bewildered, unbelieving still, yet hovering on the edge of conviction.

“Is it really you, Bobby?” he whispered.  “I can’t believe it!  Let me look at you!  Let me see for myself!”

The man beside him made no answer.  He had snatched up the first thing he could find, a fragment of a broken tent-peg, to tighten the pressure upon the wound.

But, as if in response to Herne’s appeal, he freed one hand momentarily, and pushed back the covering from his face.  And in the dim light Herne looked, looked closely; then shut his eyes and sank back with an uncontrollable shudder.

“Merciful Heaven!” he said.

VIII

“Monty, I say!  Monty!”

Again the gulf of years was bridged; again the voice he knew came down to him.  Herne wrestled with himself, and opened his eyes.

The man in Arab dress was still kneeling by his side, the skeleton hands still supported him, but the face was veiled again.

He suppressed another violent shudder.

“In Heaven’s name,” he said, “what are you?”

“I am a dead man,” came the answer.  “Don’t move!  I will call your man in a moment, but I must speak to you first.  Do you feel all right?”

“Bobby!” Herne said.

“No, I am not Bobby.  He died, you know, ages ago.  They cut him up and burned him.  Don’t move.  I have stopped the bleeding, but it will easily start again.  Lean back—­so!  You needn’t look at me.  You will never see me again.  But if I hadn’t shown you—­once, you would never have understood.  Are you comfortable?  Can you listen?”

“Bobby!” Herne said again.

He seemed incapable of anything but that one word, spoken over and over, as though trying to make himself believe the incredible.

“I am not Bobby,” the voice reiterated.  “Put that out of your mind for ever!  He belonged to another life, another world.  Don’t you believe me?  Must I show you—­again?  Do you really want to talk with me face to face?”

“Yes,” Herne said, with abrupt resolution.  “I will see you—­talk with you—­as you are.”

There was a brief pause, and he braced himself to face, without blenching, the thing that a moment before, his soldier’s training notwithstanding, had turned him sick with horror.  But he was spared the ordeal.