another hour's
march, and they went on.

The hour slipped by; he could not so much as see against the sky the
palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of the journey
near at hand; the horizon line of sand was vast as the circle of the
open sea.

He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the guide--he
had deceived him, murdered him; tears of rage and weariness flowed over
his fevered cheeks; he was bowed down with fatigue upon fatigue, his
throat seemed to be glued by the desert thirst. The guide meanwhile
stood motionless, listening to these complaints with an ironical
expression, studying the while, with the apparent indifference of an
Oriental, the scarcely perceptible indications in the lie of the sands,
which looked almost black, like burnished gold.

"I have made a mistake," he remarked coolly. "I could not make out the
track, it is so long since I came this way; we are surely on it now, but
we must push on for two hours."

"The man is right," thought M. de Montriveau.

So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native. It seemed
as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like the invisible tie
between the condemned man and the headsman. But the two hours went by,
Montriveau had spent his last drops of energy, and the skyline was a
blank, there were no palm-trees, no hills. He could neither cry out
nor groan, he lay down on the sand to die, but his eyes would have
frightened the boldest; something in his face seemed to say that he
would not die alone. His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool
glance like a man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept
at a safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim. At last M.
Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse. The guide came
nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said, "Was it not your own
will to go where I am taking you, in spite of us all? You say that I
have lied to you. If I had not, you would not be even here. Do you want
the truth? Here it is. _We have still another five hours' march before
us, and we cannot go back_. Sound yourself; if you have not courage
enough, here is my dagger."

Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength, M.
de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; he drew a fresh stock of
courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet, and followed
his guide. The five hours were at an end, and still M. de Montriveau
saw noth