"Oh, he crawled through somehow; Heaven only knows how! But he's done now, poor beggar—pegging out fast. We got him into shelter, but we couldn't do more, he was in such agony."
The speaker stopped, for Durant had broken into a run. The moonlight showed him a group of men gathered about a prone figure. They separated and stood aside as he reached them; and he, kneeling, found in the prone figure the man who had talked with him in the afternoon of the friend who had played him false.
He was very far gone, lying in a dreadful twisted heap, his head, with its bloodstained bandages, resting on his arm. Yet Durant saw that he still lived, and tried with gentle hands to ease the strain of his position.
With a sharp gasp, Ford opened his eyes.
"Hullo!" he said. "It's you, is it? Did they get the water?"
"They have got it by now," the doctor answered.
"Ah!" The man's lips twisted in a difficult smile. He struggled bravely to keep the mortal agony out of his face. "Gave you the slip that time," he gasped. "Disobeyed orders, too. But it didn't matter—except for example. You must tell them, eh? Dying men have privileges."
"Tell him he'd have had the V. C. for it," whispered the officer in command, over the doctor's shoulder.
Durant complied, and caught the quick gleam that shot up in the dying eyes at his words.
"The gods were always behind time—with me," came the husky whisper. "I used to think I'd scale Olympus, but—they kicked me down. If—if there's any water to spare, when it's gone round, I—I——"