Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/59

 thirty-four days, the last pool of stagnant water we had seen was thirty days ago, and that was undrinkable, and we certainly had not water enough to last us another thirty-four days.

"It is obviously a case of 'Forward does it!' old man," I said, "and the sooner we reach that fertile and elusive land the better I shall be pleased."

We covered another fifteen miles westward that day, and as night drew on, it seemed to me as if I had never breathed such delicious and invigorating air as reached us through the folds of our tent. The moon had risen and looked down placidly at the unvarying monotony beneath her, and I, in spite of the peace and silence of the night, could not get to sleep, but tossed about restlessly on my rug, with intervals of short, troubled unconsciousness.

Suddenly something roused me and caused me to sit up listening and wide awake; the cry of the vultures, perhaps, or of a hyena rendered bold in the night. Hugh, too, had jumped up, and I followed him outside the tent, with an unaccountable feeling of something strange in the air round me.

The wilderness, arid and desolate, looked almost poetic as it lay bathed in the moonlight. The stars shone down bright and mysterious overhead; to the south we could see the summits of a long range of hills dimly outlined against the deep indigo of the sky, and before us the great and immeasurable vastness, with its secrets and its mysteries, its evenness and peace, which we had learned to know so well, and yet I could not say what it was that seemed so strange, so unaccountable in the air.

"Can you smell it, Mark?" asked Hugh, suddenly.

Smell it! Yes, that was it! I realised it now; my nostrils had been so long accustomed to the smell of