For a while he strove against it, and managed
to keep it at bay; but the sight of Hassan, curled up and calmly
slumbering, soon served to bring home to him the futility of
watchfulness. The Arab was obviously resigned to his particular fate,
whatever that might be, and, since sleep had become a necessity to him,
it seemed useless to combat it. What, after all, could vigilance do for
him in that world of hostility? The odds were so strongly against him
that it had become almost a fight against the inevitable. And he was too
tired to keep it up. With a sigh, he suffered his limbs to relax and lay
as one dead.
IV
HE awoke hours after with an inarticulate feeling that someone wanted
him, and started up to the sound of a rifle shot that pierced the
stillness like a crack of thunder. In a second he would have been upon
his feet, but, even as he sprang, something else that was very close at
hand sprang also, and hurled him backwards. He found himself fighting
desperately in the grip of an immense savage, fighting at a hopeless
disadvantage, with the man's knees crushing the breath out of his body,
and the man's hands locked upon his throat.
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