bullet to end it
all, and once I actually lifted my revolver to my head; but dead
Inyati's last whisper seemed again to sound in my ear had I made a
"good fight," to end it like a coward?

And so I lay in the shade of a tree, and sleep, the blessed healer,
came to me and saved my reason. For when I awoke, although my heart was
heavy, my brain was clear, and I knew what lay before me, and no longer
shirked the task.

The lion's head I hewed from its body, for I could not tear its huge
jaws asunder to release Inyati, and there I buried victim and victor
together.

And so, I was alone, in the heart of the desert, with return an
impossibility.

I struck north, as Inyati had told me, due north; in spite of the fact
that in that direction the dunes were of the worst; and for a day, and
half a night, I wayfared, striving in sheer physical suffering to drown
the sorrow of losing Inyati. God knows what I went through, or the poor
horses that I drove ruthlessly forward; moreover, the fever that was
already burning in my veins may have rendered me delirious? Certain it
is that this part, and many a day afterwards, is but a confused dream
to me. A dream of suffering, of incessant wandering from pan to pan;
here a few mouthfuls of stagnant water, and there a few t'samma still
keeping myself and the horses alive. For days the wandering must have
been purely mechanical: but one day I came to myself just as the sun
was setting. I felt weak and exhausted but perfectly sane. I was
parched, and my water-skin was gone, probably thrown away in a fit of
frenzy or despair I could not remember.

The horses, mere wrecks of what they had been, were munching the last
of a small patch of t'samma; and I was barely in time to rescue a
couple of still eatable ones, to moisten my parched tongue.

I had no idea how long I had been lying there unconscious, but the idea
of pushing north had now become an obsession with me, and I staggered
to the highest dune to look around me. I was still in a wilderness of
dunes, but I noticed that what little vegetation there was, was new and
strange to me; indeed, except for the t'samma there was scarce a bush
or plant I could recognize.

It was evident that I had traveled far in my delirium, and my heart
bounded, as I made out, away to the north, a kopje of rugged rocks
rising from the dunes. Here, apparently, then, I was at length reaching
the confines of this wilderness of sand, for these were the first ro