He was still deadly pale.
“I don’t know, my Flint,” he answered, looking at me with the fixed expression of a man who has had a shock. “I know only that the hand of death itself was laid upon me, there in the dark—first it has touched my arm, and then my heart where my clothes were open for the heat.”
“How do you know it was the hand of death?” I asked, getting a bottle of whisky out of one of our swags. “How do you know you weren’t asleep after all, and having a bad dream?”
“I was not asleep; you will remember I clasped your hand. And that thing was death, I know, because in these plains where it is all the time hot there is nothing cold at all, and that which has touched me was the cold of death.”
“Rats! You aren’t dead. Have some whisky,” I said, pouring it out.
“Yes, I am escaped; that’s what I don’t comprehend,” said the Marquis thoughtfully. “That is good whisky; that warms the muscles of the heart. Flint—” with a sudden revival— “you can not but must allow, this is the very devil interesting!”
We were rather sleepy in the morning, I remember—the effect of the coffee having worn off. I had an idea or two as to what course we had best follow for the capturing of the stone; but nothing could be done before midday. So I and the Marquis kept watch for each other to sleep, and we got in a good three hours apiece before noon.
When the white blaze of twelve o’clock was searing the palms once more, and the village folk were away or asleep, and Mo had gone down to the river again to bathe, I beckoned the Marquis out. We wore the rubber-soled shoes that one uses for easy bush-walking, and made not a sound as we passed along the street. The shadows of the palms were ink upon white paper; the dogs slept beneath the houses; the tame cockatoos and parrots drowsed upon the eaves. The heat was awful: it seemed as though the village in its stillness lay dead beneath a torrent of white fire from the implacable sky.
We gained the sorcerer’s house without being seen and slipped into the cool interior, gasping like creatures that find water after drought.