should be.
Damocles de Warrenne's brain became active with plots and plans for escape—escape from himself and the temptation which he must avoid by flight, since he felt he could not conquer it in fight.
He must disappear. He must die—die in such a way that Lucille would never suppose he had committed suicide. It was the only way to save himself from so awful a crime and to save her from himself.
He would start just before dawn on Abdul's shikar camel, be well away from Kot Ghazi by daylight and reach the old deserted dak-bungalow, that no one ever used, by evening. There Abdul would come to him with his bhoja-oont31 bringing the usual supplies, and on receipt of them he would dismiss Abdul altogether and disappear again into the desert, this time for good. Criminal lunatics and homicidal maniacs are better dead, especially when they are tempted beyond their strength to marry innocent, beautiful girls who do not understand the position.
Chapter XIV.
The Snake and the Sword
The dak-bungalow again at last! But how terribly dreary, depressing, and horrible it looked now—the hut that had once seemed a kind of heaven on earth to the starving wanderer. Then, Lucille was thousands of miles away (geographically, and millions of miles away in imagination). Now, she was but thirty miles away—and it was almost more than human endurance could bear…. Should he turn back even now, ride straight to Kot Ghazi, fall at her feet and say: "I can struggle no longer. Come back to Monksmead—and let what will be, be. I have no more courage."
And go mad, one day, and kill her? Keep sane, and sully her fair name? On to the hovel. Rest for the night, and, at dawn, strike into the desert and there let what will be, be.
Making the camel kneel, Damocles de Warrenne removed its saddle, fastened its rein-cord tightly to a post, fed it, and then detached the saddle-bags that hung flatly on either side of the saddle frame, as well as a patent-leather sword-cover which contained a sword of very different pattern from that for which it had been made.
Entering the hut, of which the doors and windows were bolted on the outside, he flung open the shutters of the glassless windows, lit a candle, and prepared to eat a frugal meal. From the saddlebags he took bread, eggs, chocolate, sardines, biscuits and apples. With a mixture of permanganate of potash, tea and cold water from the well, if the puddle at the bottom of a deep hole could be so termed, he made a drink that, while drinkable by one who has known worse, was unlikely to cause an attack upon an enfeebled constitution, of cholera, enteric, dysentery or any other of India's specialities. What would he not have given for a clean whisky-and-soda in the place of the nauseating muck—but what should be the end of a man who, in his position, turned to alcohol for help and comfort? "The last state of that man …"
After striking a judicious balance between what he should eat for dinner and what he should reserve for breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? (No, Damocles, an ex-Colonel of the Indian Medical Service "pinched" them for splints.) A most depressing human habitation even for the most cheerful and care-free of souls, a terrible place for a man in a dangerous mental state of unstable equilibrium and cruel agony…. Only thirty miles away—and a camel at the door. Lucille still within a night's ride. Lucille and absolute joy…. The desert and certain death—a death of which she must be assured, that in time she might marry Ormonde Delorme or some such sound, fine man. Abdul must find his body—and it must be the body not of an obvious suicide, but of a man who, lost in the desert, had evidently travelled in circles, trying to find his way to the hut he had left, on a shooting expedition. Yes—he knew all about travelling in circles—and what he had done in ignorance (as well as in agony and horror), he would now do intentionally and with grim purpose. Hard on the poor camel!… Perhaps he could manage so that it was set free in time to find its way back somehow. It would if it were loosed within smell of water…. He must die fairly and squarely of hunger and thirst—no blowing out of brains or throat-cutting, no trace of suicide; just lost, poor chap, and no more to be said…. Death of thirst—in that awful desert—again—No! God in Heaven he had faced the actual pangs of it once, and escaped—he could not face it again—he wasn't strong enough … and the unhappy man sprang to his feet to rush from the room and saddle-up the camel for—Life and Lucille—and then his eye fell on the Sword, the Sword of his Fathers, brought to him by Lucille, who had said, "Have it with you always, Dearest. It can talk to you, as even I can not…."
He sat down and drew it from the incongruous modern case and from its scabbard. Ha! What did it say but "Honour!" What was its message but "Do the right thing. Death is nothing—Honour is everything. Be worthy of your Name, your Traditions, your Ancestors—"
He would die.
Let him die that Lucille's honour, Lucille's happiness, Lucille's welfare, might live—and he kissed the hilt of the Sword as he had so often done in childhood. Having removed boots, leggings and socks, he lay down on the settee—innocent of bedding and pillows, pulled over him the coat that had been rolled and strapped trooper-fashion behind the saddle and fell asleep….
And dreamed that he was shut naked in a tiny cell with a gigantic python upon whose yard-long fangs he was about to be impaled and, as usual, awoke trembling and bathed in perspiration, with dry mouth and throbbing head, sickness, and tingling extremities.
The wind had got up and had blown out the candle which should have lasted till dawn!…
As he lay shaking, terrified (uncertain as to whether he were a soul in torment or a human being still alive), and debating as to whether he could get off the couch, relight the candle, and close the windward window, he heard a sound that caused his heart to miss a beat and his hair to rise on end. A strange, dry rustle merged in the sound of paper being dragged across the floor, and he knew that he was shut in with a snake, shut up in a blue room, cut off from the matches on the table, and doomed to lie and await the Death he dreaded more than ten thousand others—or, going mad, to rush upon that Death.
He was shut in with the SNAKE. At last it had come for him in its own concrete form and had him bound and gagged by fascination and fear—in the Dark, the awful cruel Dark. No more mere myrmidons. The SNAKE ITSELF.
He tried to scream and could not. He tried to strike out at an imaginary serpent-head, huge as an elephant, that reared itself above him—and could not.
He could not even draw his bare foot in under the overcoat. And steadily the paper dragged across the floor … Was it approaching? Was it progressing round and round by the walls? Would the Snake find the bed and climb on to it? Would it coil round his throat and gaze with-luminescent eyes into his, and torture him thus for hours ere thrusting its fangs into his brain? Would it coil up and sleep upon his body for hours before doing so, knowing that he could not move? Here were his Snake-Dreams realized, and in the actual flesh he lay awake and conscious, and could neither move nor cry aloud!
In the Dark he lay bound and gagged, in a blue-walled room, and the Snake enveloped him with its Presence, and he could in no wise save himself.
Oh, God, why let a sentient creature suffer thus? He himself
