SNOW UPON THE DESERT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21346, 22 November 1932, Page 15

SNOW UPON THE DESERT

By J. RUSSELL WARREN

CHAPTER Vin.—(Continued) One thing was certain, though; they could nti t stay where they were indefinitely. The question was, really, should they work along the foothills and try to ifind Corcoran's men and the horses, or should they try to cross tlio desert, alone and on foot. There was danger either -a-ay, but in the first, there was the distinct chance that Corcoran's men might not have waited, but have given him up and gone back, and there might be hillmen there instead, and of the two j evils Elisabeth preferred to risk the desert lather than the Wali.

So they decided to strike straight across ■toward Ashar. Corcoran had bought from the headsmen a couple of goatskin bags, one of which held chupatties and dates and dried goats' flesh, while the other would hold water; make a water-bag such as a bhisti carries. They had -halted by a spring, so it would be easy enough to fill the.bag, and Corcoran considered that it would hold enough to sec them through if they were careful. Ho said they would only march by night, and rest during the day; it would be less tiring, and they should not get so thirsty. Elisabeth, too tired arid numbed mentally, to feel very much, agreed; she accepted everything with a sort of fatalistic resignation and with complete faith in Roger Corcoran. After coming to their decision, they

rested on the hill slope for the remainder ©f the day. Elisabeth tried to sleep, but it was too impossibly hot. There was no shade of any sort—among the low scrub that grow there—it was even hotter than ou the bare hill slopes or the scorched desert —and the brazen sunlight poured <k»vn But at last the temperature began to drop, the swift twilight came and passed, and as soon as the stars were clear enough to set a courso by, they set off. A queer pair of scarecrows they must have looked; Elisabeth with her Arab tattered costume tucked round her—for galabeah and aba were far too long for her-—and her tattered riding boots on her blistered and swollen feet; Corcoran in the frowsy brown cloth tun;c and domed black hat of the dead hillman, with the water-bag and the foodbag slung round him. f

All night they marched, and covered ever twenty miles. After the first five or six Elisabeth walked mechanically; her legs seemed to move of their own accord, without any direction of her wilL Again, all she wanted was to lie down and sleep. But at the end of every hour Corcoran called a halt for ten minutes, army fashion, and each time she dropped where she stood and slept away every one of the six hundred seconds till Corcoran roused her. They went in almost complete silence; Corcoran seemed disinclined to talk, and Elisabeth was far too tired. All the next day they lay on the burning ground, without a scrap of shelter, panting. Sleep was impossible in the blazing heat; to sit still all those hours was » torture. They ate a little, but even that was without appetite. Elisabeth sat

looking at the water-bag, its contents getting steadily warmer and warmer, and longed to drink it all. She watched the

sun, and its crawl across the sky seemed so slow that sometimes she felt that the

miracle of Joshua had happened again, and/ that the world stood still. Sunset came at last, radiant with man}

colours and bringing at last the faintest breath of cool air. And then, when Elisabeth felt that she really could sleep, she

had to drag herself to her feet and march again. They marched on, mile after mile, hour after hour, until she was actually, literally, marching in her sleep, utterly oblivious of where she was going or why. She felt, at times, she was dead; that

'her soul was sleeping somewhere, but that her body, with just enough of her brain left to feel weariness and pain and

utter despair, was left, doomed to march unceasingly for ever and ever. She was not really conscious of the da\yn of the second day; she had a sensation that the light around .her had changed, but she scarcely understood in what way or for what reason. She really understood nothing, except that the ground was rocking beneath her feet and that her knees were giving way beneath her. Then the ground seemed to rise up quite slowly round her and wrap her up. She had a vague idea of seeing Corcoran's face close to hers, anxiety and concern and contrition upon it, of feeling him pouring water down her throat and over her face and hands, while she tried to protest that he must not waste it, because it was so precious. Afterward, looking back, she was convinced that she actually slipped away for a little while, and that then she must have come back, because she heard a noise. It was a curious noise; not one that she had heard very often, and yet that wai familiar. She knew it and yet couldn't place it, and that worrit*! her unreasonably. It was a sort of low, droning, vibrating hum, louder and softer, but gadu,ally coming nearer; and presently it was a roar, a deafening roar, that seemed to fill the air all round her, and beat upon her brain, until she wanted to scream to Corcoran to stop it. It did stop, then', and she tried to thank hiin and could not, and then she was certain she was either delirious or crazy, because there was another face bending over her, the face of Jerry Tresilian, and she knew that was perfectly impossible because he was miles away at Basra. She tried to say something to him, and he vanished, and then she felt herself pinking down and down and down. -After that she had a dreadful dream of floating in the air, round and round inside A huge factoiy amongst roaring, red-hot machinery. All the machines stretched out steel hands to catch her as she passed, and drag her in amongst their cog-wheels and rollers. But always she just managed to dodge them and went floating on. Ihis, she felt, lasted for years, but nt last she floated out through an open window into * hig block of ice, and lay there in it, J'ke a salmon on a fishmonger's slab. And then, quite suddenly she woke and found she was in a beautiful soft, clean, white ef l> in a beautiful, clean, while hospital room, and a beautiful, clean, white nurse giving her the most delicious drink any human being ever tasted. /Afterward, of course, sho began to realise a little of what had actually happened, and Corcoran explained the rest. spite of his careful precautions—he had <e rtainly done everything he could to Ina ke the march as easy for her as was possible in the circumstances —she had Rone down that dawn with heal-stroke. It looked like Die end of everything, but ol 'coran, after unsuccessfully trying to revive her with the precious water, had Jioisted ' ,r r upon his shoulders and irudged on, in a desperate attempt to can 'y her the rest, of the way. He knew pertectly well that it was hopeless; he cou 'd_not carry her all those miles, and even if that were possible, she could not survive all those hours under the sun. , u t> as he trudged on, he first heard, IJ'id then saw, an aeroplane coming over the south-east. At first he thought it somqori(j in search of them, but then ► ised no news of the happenings in

AN INTRIGUING STORY OF THE EAST

(COP mi GUT)

Uiq hills could liavo crossed the desert yot—unless his men had gono back and reported him missing, which lie doubted. He realised that the pilot, if ho saw the queer pair tramping across the desert, would only take them for natives, so he put Elisabeth down, stripped off her Arab garments to show her drill jacket and breeches, took off his brown tunic, and waved all of them frantically. The 'plane came lower, but swept over and past him, and he thought that, after all, lig had not been seen. But it turned, circled, swooped down in spirals, and landed not fifty yards away. Tlio pilot scrambled out and came running toward them, and he saw that it was Jerry Tresilian. He had, after several days of persistent importunity, obtained permission to take a 'plane across the border to see if he could pick up any trace of Lady Susan's .safari. Luckily, ho had been watching tbe ground as ho flew, and had caught sight of Corcoran's signal. But even now that he had found them he could do nothing, llis 'plane was a single-seater fighter. lie had to leave them where they were, fly back to Shaiba, and come again in a bigger machine. Then, very carefully, he and Corcoran lifted Elisabeth aboard and took her back to Basra and the hospital. Elisabeth knew nothing of all that was happening. Neither did she learn till long afterward that Corcoran only waited to have a little food, and then insisted upon being llown out again to bring in his men. They were exactly where he had left them, and would have stayed there waiting for him until the day of judgment. He got out of the 'plane, mounted his horse, and rode back to .A mar a with them —and then be went to bed and slept solidly for thirty-six hours.

CHAPTER IX QUEEN ELISABETH Elisabeth, afterward, was apt to make light of her illness, but actually it was touch and go with her, and the doctors and nurses had an anxious timo in pulling her through. Used as one may be to heat-stroke cases, they need great care. You have to pack the patient in ice to bring his temperature down from the heights round about 106 degrees where it is soaring, yet the moment it approaches normal—and once it Starts to fall it simply drops like a plummet—you must whip him out and into hot blankets, or it will drop too fast toward zero, and he will be past the aid of both human endeavour and medical science. And Elisabeth, of course, was utterly worn out with all she had gone through. But they saved her, and her sound condition, her vitality, and that quietly unaggressively tenacious spirit of hers, brought her into the convalescent stage remarkably soon. Tresilian hung about the hospital the whole of the time he was off duty, and Corcoran, 'back in Basra, came in fairly often. Presently she was able to see them, and one day, when she was considered strong enough to talk at some length, she spoke to them of Susan Dangerfield.

" She's buried in the cemetery here." Corcoran said awkwardly. " I got a permit from the Persian consul to lake a party across the border and bring her body back, right away." He told Elisabeth no details, which was propably just as well. Tresilian, it seems, wanted a permit to go and drop bombs on Wali's fort and blow it skyhigh, but the diplomatic reasons the Wali himself so shrewdly counted upon made anything of the kind impossible. The Persian Government informed the Government of Iraq that they were very angry with Wali, but that Ihe.y would deal with him themselves. Of course they did nothing. ' I don't see why we want to worry about the Persian's amour propre," Tresilian complained. " Supposing we did go over and lay a few eggs on this Wali fellow's muck heap, what could Persia do?"

" Nowadays," Corcoran answered dryly, "we must,n't offend the tender susceptibilities of little nations who aren't strong enough to hit us for it. The Government at home are being mighty careful not to hurt anyone's feelings, and any rightthinking but ill-advised airman who stirs up a diplomatic incident will get the unqualified sack." They argued about it for a little while, and tnen quietened down, and Elisabeth had a chance to talk again. She began to tell them the story that Lady Susan had told her, and the mission that had been handed on to her. She felt sure she could trust them both.

The two men sat listening in a tense silence, in the green twilight of that bare, 6potless room —for the chicks were drawn at the windows. Jerry sat on a chair, bending toward Elisabeth, with his hands dropped between his knees, his eyes fixed on her face. Every now and then he made some little comment under his breath. These, and the changing expressions on his face, showed quite plainly the different emotions the story aroused in him. Corcoran stood leaning against the wall, with his feet wide apart and his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He said not a word the whole time. His face was impassive, his eyes impenetrable. Not till Elisabeth had finished did he move or speak. Then slowly he took his hands out of his pockets and came forward, and there was a glowing flame in his eyes. ' By jove, Miss Tarleton,'"he said, " if this is true —"

Elisabeth asked him, a little indignantly, if he doubted the truth of the narrative He shrugged his shoulders. She showed him the little sketch map of the route to Kerhat that Harry Stevenage had sent Lady Susan. He examined it carefully. " People can be mistaken," ho said. " I remember this fellow Stevenage going up into Persia. He didn't say anything about trying to find this wonderful hakim—but then, of course, he wouldn't, feoling as he did about it. He may have been right, of course. I wouldn't say anything is impossible in the East. I've seen somo queer things myself. If this hakim and his cure really exists —it would be a wonderful thing. I can't imagine anything more terrible than blindness. Imagine being able to give sight back to hundreds of thousands of blind people all over the world—" Elisabeth lay there and stared at him in sheer amazement. She had not thought him capable of such emotion. His lips were trembling, his hands twitched as if they were anxious to take hold of something. There were tears in his eyes. For the first time Elisabeth realised that beneath his reticence, his cool detachment of manner, lay a surprising tender-hearted-ness, an intense compassion for suffering. He was the kind of man who could forco himself to be almost brutal if it were necessary—he had been ruthless in making Elisabeth march and march through tho hills and across the desert. Tt was the only way to save her life, but at heart ho was inherently merciful. "You're really interested?" the girl asked him. He nodded. "If you'll I rust, me to carry it through," he said, " I'd like to start on it—now." " Me, to," said Tresilian, jumping to his feet. " I'm in on this. You're not going to leave me out." They stood (here, by Elisabeth's bedside, looking down at her and smiling. For a little while she could not speak to them. She felt that if she opened her lips sho would break down. It seemed wonderful to her that she should have made two such friends, and that she should be able to carry out (he almost impossible trust that Lady Susan had left her Yet, as she lav looking up into their faces—Corcoran's lean and brown and lined, Tresilian's round and fresh and freckled—she saw a difference in their thoughts, their emotions and reasons. The boy was ready to tako on the mission, with all tho dangers it might hold, for j her sake, and for that only. Corcoran I was eager to do it for its own sake. If j anyone else-Lady Susan, or somebody even less attractive —bar! put tho pioposal before him, he would have been just as eager. I (To be continued daily). j