ue, old chap," replied Heywood, curtly. "These playful little
animals get first notice. You're not the only arrival to-night."

CHAPTER III

UNDER FIRE

The desert was sometimes Gobi, sometimes Sahara, but always an infinite
stretch of sand that floated up and up in a stifling layer, like the
tide. Rudolph, desperately choked, continued leaping upward against an
insufferable power of gravity, or straining to run against the force of
paralysis. The desert rang with phantom voices,--Chinese voices that
mocked him, chanting of pestilence, intoning abhorrently in French.

He woke to find a knot of bed-clothes smothering him. To his first
unspeakable relief succeeded the astonishment of hearing the voices
continue in shrill chorus, the tones Chinese, the words, in louder
fragments, unmistakably French. They sounded close at hand, discordant
matins sung by a mob of angry children. Once or twice a weary, fretful
voice scolded feebly: "Un-peu-de-s'lence! Un-peu-de-s'lence!" Rudolph
rose to peep through the heavy jalousies, but saw nothing more than
sullen daylight, a flood of vertical rain, and thin rivulets coursing
down a tiled roof below. The morning was dismally cold.

"Jolivet's kids wake you?" Heywood, in a blue kimono, nodded from the
doorway. "Public nuisance, that school. Quite needless, too. Some bally
French theory, you know, sphere of influence, and that rot. Game played
out up here, long ago, but they keep hanging on.--Bath's ready, when you
like." He broke out laughing. "Did you climb into the water-jar,
yesterday, before dinner? Boy reports it upset. You'll find the dipper
more handy.--How did you ever manage? One leg at a time?"

Echoes of glee followed his disappearance. Rudolph, blushing, prepared
to descend into the gloomy vault of ablution. Charcoal fumes, however,
and the glow of a brazier on the dark floor below, not only revived all
his old terror, but at the stair-head halted him with a new.

"Is the water safe?" he called.

Heywood answered impatiently from his bedroom.

"Nothing safe in this world, Mr. Hackh. User's risk." An inaudible
mutter ended with, "Keep clean, anyway."

At breakfast, though the acrid smoke was an enveloping reminder, he made
the only reference to their situation.

"Rain at last: too late, though, to flush out the gutters. We needed it
a month ago.--I say, Hackh, if you don't mind, you might as well cheer
up. From now on, it's pure heads and tails. We're all und