Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/423

Rh children flew from that place a few score. Stas was hugely overjoyed at this sight and it gave him renewed courage.

"I did not expect," he said to Nell, "that kites could fly such a distance. I was certain that they would remain on the summits of Karamojo and I only let them fly prepared for any accident. But now I see that the wind can carry them where it wants to and I have a hope that those which we sent from the mountains surrounding Bassa-Narok, and now on the road, will fly as far as the ocean."

"They surely will," Nell answered.

"God grant," the boy acquiesced, thinking of the dangers and hardships of the further journey.

The caravan started from the river on the third day, taking with them a great supply of water in leather bags. Before nightfall they again entered upon a region grilled by the sun, in which not even acacias grew, and the ground in some places was as bare as a threshing-floor. Sometimes they met passion-flowers with trunks imbedded in the ground and resembling monstrous pumpkins two yards in diameter. In these huge globes there shot out lianas as thin as string, which, creeping over the ground, covered immense distances, forming a thicket so impenetrable that it would be difficult even for mice to penetrate it. But notwithstanding the beautiful color of these plants, resembling the European acanthus, there were so many thorns in them that neither the King nor the horses could find any nourishment in them. Only the donkey nibbled them cautiously.

Sometimes in the course of several English miles they did not see anything except coarse, short grass and low plants, like immortelles, which crumbled upon being touched. After a night's bivouac, during the whole of