Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/54

 sky, the interminable billows of sand, which seemed never to vary in shape or size, but to repeat themselves in weary numbers day after day, week after week. Soon I lost count of time, while we wandered on straight towards the setting sun. Yes, straight! Though sand dunes rose before and round us, steep, rocky tableland, moving shingle, inaccessible heights, yet, straight before us as the arrow flies, from the tomb of the Greek priest to the heart of Osiris, we always found a mountain pass, a way up or round a boulder—a way, in fact, straight on towards the west.

We went forward in the early mornings and late afternoons, and rested during the hot parts of the day and the darker hours of the night. Our worst foe decidedly was ennui, at least it was so as far as I was concerned, though Hugh helped me to pass many weary hours by plunging into his endless store of knowledge about the people we had set out to seek. I could see that, as we wandered on, his belief and enthusiasm never for a moment flagged, and when I expressed my abhorrence of the interminable expanse of shingle and sand he would rouse my spirits by glowing descriptions of what lay beyond.

After the first week we had ceased to perceive the slightest trace of animal life, and this terrible silence, which hangs over the desert like a pall, was more oppressive than words can say. So oppressive was it that one almost longed for the weird cries of the hyenas, which had made the nights hideous in the beginning of our journey.

Then the day came when exactly one-half of our provisions which we had taken with us had been consumed by us and by the beasts, the day after which the question of turning back would become more and more difficult to answer; and still before us sand and