d spurted up in
a brain already mad with the torture of thirst.

And yet that brain was clear enough to guide him in the way he would
go. He studied the stars, found the north and set his course
painstakingly. Presently he began to walk less hurriedly, bent
savagely upon reserving his strength. When there was some object ahead
set visibly against the skyline, a hillock or a clump of bushes, he
laid his course by it, checking again and again by the stars. When he
had walked an hour he stopped and rested, lighting a match to look at
his watch. He allowed himself exactly five minutes and floundered up
and went on again. Doggedly he sought to shut his mind to the pain
stabbing through his weary feet, to the constriction of his throat, to
the ache of his body so sorely and so long punished. When, had matters
been different, he might have cried out: 'God, for a drink!' he now
muttered dully, 'God, put him into my two hands !'

The fine, delicate machinery of a human brain, like any man-made
mechanism of great nicety, may readily be thrown into confusion, its
exquisite balance disturbed, its functioning confounded. Thirst,
near-exhaustion, severe bodily distress and, on top of all, blood-lust
anger made Alan Howard over into another man. He was possessed,
obsessed. As the night wore on endlessly he created for himself
visions; he came a thousand times upon the Indian; he sank his fingers
and thumbs into a corded throat; he beat with his fists at the pulp of
a face. He grew accustomed to his own voice, muttering ceaselessly.
He heard himself praying as another man; the burden of his prayers was
always the same: 'Deliver him, O Lord, into mine hands.' He was half
mad for water and he cursed Kish Taka; he drove his body on when the
agonized muscles rebelled and, driving mercilessly, he cursed Kish Taka.

Somehow the night passed and through it he staggered on. He fell as he
had seen the Indian fall; he recalled that the Indian had arisen and he
rose. Each time that he failed in something that he tried to do it was
as though an imp jeered and taunted him, calling to him: 'Ho! The
Indian is a better man. He is off there in the darkness, laughing at
you!'

There came a time when he stumbled at every step, when he pitched
forward frequently and lay inert and had to gather his strength to get
up; when he wondered if he was going mad or if already he had gone mad;
when his thirst was a killing agony and he knew that