gainst moving mountains, the
obsession of the things they had been pursuing, had combined to shatter
sleep.

He came out in the open for a breath of air.

The camp was plunged in slumber. The two sentries ordered by Berselius to
keep watch and to feed the fire lay like the others, with arms outspread;
the fire was burning low, as though drowned out by the flood of moonlight,
and Adams was on the point of going to the pile of fuel for some sticks to
feed it, when he saw a sight which was one of the strangest, perhaps, that
he would ever see.

The sentry lying on the right of the fire sat up, rose to his feet, went
to the wood pile, took an armful of fuel and flung it on the embers.

The fire roared up and crackled, and the sleep-walker, who had performed
this act with wide-staring eyes that saw nothing, returned to his place
and lay down.

It was as if the order of Berselius still rang in his ears and the vision
of Berselius still dominated his mind.

Adams, thinking of this strange thing, stood with the wind fanning his
face, looking over the country to the west, the country they had traversed
that day in tribulation under the burning sun. There was nothing to tell
now of the weary march, the pursuit of phantoms, the long, long miles of
labour; all was peaceful and coldly beautiful, moonlit and silent.

He was about to return to his tent when a faint sound struck his ear. A
faint, booming sound, just like that which troubles us when the eardrum
vibrates on its own account from exhaustion or the effect of drugs.

He stopped his ears and the sound ceased.

Then he knew that the sound was a real sound borne on the air.

He thought it was coming to him on the wind, which was now blowing
steadily in his face, and he strained his eyes to see the cause; but he
saw nothing. There was no cloud in the sky or storm on the horizon, yet
the sound was increasing. Boom, boom, becoming deeper and more sonorous,
now like the long roll of muffled drums, now like the sea bursting in the
sea-caves of a distant coast, or the drums of the cyclone when they beat
the charge for the rushing winds. But the heart-searching feature of this
strange booming in the night was a rhythm, a pulsation that spoke of life.
This was no dull shifting of matter, as in an earthquake, or of air as in
a storm; this sound was alive.

Adams sprang to the tent where Berselius was sleeping, and dragged him out
by the arm, crying, "Listen!"

He would hav