He looked at the man at his side lying wrapt in the aloofness of Death. Poor devil! How horrible he looked, and how indifferent! A sense of shuddering disgust came upon Piers. He wondered if he would die as hideously. Again the fountain mocked him softly from afar. Again the fiery torment of his thirst awoke. He contemplated attempting to walk, but instinct warned him against the risk of a headlong fall. He began with infinite difficulty to crawl upon hands and knees. His progress was desperately slow, the suffering it entailed was sometimes unendurable. And always he knew that the blood was draining from him with every foot of ground he covered. But ever that maddening fountain lured him on... The night had stretched into untold ages. He wondered if in his frequent spells of unconsciousness he had somehow missed many days. He had seen the moon swing half across the sky. He had watched with delirious amusement the dead men rise to bury each other. And he had spent hours in wondering what would happen to the last of them. His head felt oddly light, as if it were full of air, a bubble of prismatic colours that might burst into nothingness at any moment. But his body felt as if it were fettered with a thousand chains. He could hear them clanking as he moved. But still that fountain with its marble basin seemed the end and aim of his existence. Often he forgot to be thirsty now, but he never forgot that he must reach the fountain before he died. Sometimes his thirst would come back in burning spasms to urge him on, and he always knew that there was a great reason for perseverance, always felt that if he slackened he would pay a terrible penalty. The fountain was very far away. He crawled along with ever-increasing difficulty, marking the progress of his own shadow in the strong moonlight. There was something pitiless about the moon. It revealed so much that might have been mercifully veiled. From the far distance there came the long roll of cannon, shattering the peace of the night, but it was a long way off. In the château-garden there was no sound but the tinkle of the fountain and the laboured, spasmodic breathing of a man wounded wellnigh unto death. Only a few yards separated him now from the running water. It sounded like a fairy laughter, and all the gruesome horrors of the place faded into unreality. Surely it was fed by the stream at home that flowed through the preserves--the stream where the primroses grew! Only a few more yards! But how damnably difficult it was to cover them! He could hardly drag his weighted limbs along. It was the old game. He knew it well. But how devilish to fetter him so! It had been the ruin of his life. He set his teeth, and forced himself on. He would win through in spite of all.