Feversham had been
under the elms of the Lennon River on that afternoon before the feathers
came, and he was in the House of Stone at Omdurman. But why? Trench asked
himself the question and was not spared the answer.
"Willoughby took his feather back"--and upon that Feversham broke off.
His voice rambled. He seemed to be running somewhere amid sandhills
which continually shifted and danced about him as he ran, so that he
could not tell which way he went. He was in the last stage of fatigue,
too, so that his voice in his delirium became querulous and weak. "Abou
Fatma!" he cried, and the cry was the cry of a man whose throat is
parched, and whose limbs fail beneath him. "Abou Fatma! Abou Fatma!" He
stumbled as he ran, picked himself up, ran and stumbled again; and about
him the deep soft sand piled itself into pyramids, built itself into
long slopes and ridges, and levelled itself flat with an extraordinary
and a malicious rapidity. "Abou Fatma!" cried Feversham, and he began to
argue in a weak obstinate voice. "I know the wells are here--close
by--within half a mile. I know they are--I know they are."
The clue to that speech Trench had not got. He knew nothing of
Feversham's adventure at Berber; he could not tell that the wells were
the Wells of Obak, or that Feversham, tired with the hurry of his
travelling, and after a long day's march without water, had lost his way
among the shifting sandhills.
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