"And what's that below it--the black patch? Stones or scrub?"
Colin was in a day-dream. "Why do you call it black? It's blue, quite
blue."
"Rot," said the other. "It's grey-black."
"No, it's water with the sun shining on it. It's blue, but just at the
edges it's very near sea-green."
Bellew rose excitedly. "Hullo, Col, you're seeing the mirage! And you
the fittest of the lot of us! You've got the sun in your head, old man!"
"Mirage!" Colin cried in contempt. He was awake now, but the thought of
confusing his own bright western sea with a mirage gave him a curious
pain. For a moment he felt the gulf of separation between his two
worlds, but only for a moment. As the party remounted he gave his
fancies the rein, and ere he reached camp he had felt the oars in his
hand and sniffed the apple-tree blossom from the distant beaches.
The major came to him after supper.
"Bellew told me you were a bit odd to-day, Colin," he said. "I expect
your eyes are getting baddish. Better get your sand-spectacles out."
Colin laughed. "Thanks. It's awfully good of you to bother, but I think
Bellew took me up wrong. I never was fitter in my life."
* * * * * * *
By-and-by the turn came for pride to be humbled. A low desert fever took
him, and though he went through the day as usual, it was with dreary
lassitude; and at night, with hot hands clasped above his damp hair, he
found sleep a hard goddess to conquer.
It was the normal condition of the others, so he had small cause to
complain, but it worked havoc with his fancies. He had never been ill
since his childish days, and this little fever meant much to one whose
nature was poised on a needle-point. He found himself confronted with a
hard bare world, with the gilt rubbed from its corners. The Rim of the
Mist seemed a place of vague horrors; when he reached it his soul was
consumed with terror; he struggled impotently to advance; behind him
Cuna and the Acharra coast seemed a place of evil dreams. Again, as in
his old fever, he was tormented with a devouring thirst, but the sea
beside him was not fresh, but brackish as a rock-pool. He yearned for
the apple-tree beaches in front; there, he knew, were cold springs of
water; the fresh smell of it was blown towards him in his nightmare.
But as the days passed and the misery for all grew more intense, an odd
hope began to rise in his mind. It could not last, coolness and health
were waiting near, and his reason for the hope came from the odd events
at the Rim of Mist. The haze was clearing from the foreground, the
surf-lined coast seemed nearer, and though all was obscure save the
milk-white sand and the foam, yet here was earnest enough for him. Once
more he became cheerful; weak and light-headed he rode out again; and
the major, who was recovering from sunstroke, found envy take the place
of pity in his soul.
The hope was near fulfilment. One evening when the heat was changing
into the cooler twilight, Colin and Bellew were sent with a small picked
body to scour the foot-hills above the river in case of a flank attack
during the night-march. It was work they had done regularly for weeks,
and it is possible that precautions were relaxed. At any rate, as they
turned a corner of hill, in a sandy pass where barren rocks looked down
on more barren thorn thickets, a couple of rifle-shots rang out from the
scarp, and above them appeared a line of dark faces and white steel. A
mere handful, taken at a disadvantage, they could not hope to disperse
numbers, so Colin gave the word to wheel about and return. Again shots
rang out, and little Bellew had only time to catch at his friend's arm
to save him from falling from the saddle.
The word of command had scarcely left Colin's mouth when a sharp pain
went through his chest, and his breath seemed to catch and stop. He felt
as in a condensed moment of time the heat, the desert smell, the dust in
his eyes and throat, while he leaned helplessly forward on his horse's
mane. Then the world vanished for him.... The boat was rocking under
him, the oars in his hand. He pulled and it moved, straight, arrow-like
towards the forbidden shore. As if under a great wind the mist furled up
and fled. Scents of pines, of apple-trees, of great fields of thyme and
heather, hung about him; the sound of wind in a forest, of cool waters
falling in showers, of old moorland music, came thin and faint with an
exquisite clearness. A second and the boat was among the surf, its
gunwale ringed with white foam, as it leaped to the still waters beyond.
Clear and deep and still the water lay, and then the white beaches
shelved downward, and the boat grated on the sand. He turned, every limb
alert with a strange new life, crying out words which had shaped
themselves on his lips and which an echo seemed to catch and answer.
There was the green forest before him, the hills of peace, the cold
white waters. With a passionate joy he leaped on the beach, his arms
outstretched to this new earth, this light of the world, this old desire
of the heart--youth, rapture, immortality.
* * * * * * *
Bellew brought the body back to camp, himself half-dead with fatigue and
whimpering like a child. He almost fell from his horse, and when others
took his burden from him and laid it reverently in his tent, he stood
beside it, rubbing sand and sweat from his poor purblind eyes, his teeth
chattering with fever. He was given something to drink, but he swallowed
barely a mouthful.
"It was some d-d-damned sharpshooter," he said. "Right through the
breast, and he never spoke to me again. My poor old Col! He was the best
chap God ever created, and I do-don't care a dash what becomes of me
now. I was at school with him, you know, you men."
"Was he killed outright?" asked the major hoarsely.
"N-no. He lived for about five minutes. But I think the sun had got into
his head or he was mad with pain, for he d-d-didn't know where he was.
He kept crying out about the smell of pine-trees and heather and a lot
of pure nonsense about water."
"_Et dulces reminiscitur Argos_," somebody quoted mournfully, as they
went out to the desert evening.