his feet were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place
soon. "In an hour's time," said the guide. Armand braced himself
for 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