Page:Taylor - In the Dwellings of the Wilderness.djvu/94

 pass within fifty miles of the place, and then rarely; and fifty miles is no joke to an exhausted man without food or water. Oh, we'll get the Princess back yet!"

The next day came a flurry of disturbance. A digger came to Merritt and told him, quite hysterically, that he, Moussa, had seen a man slipping away among the mounds, following a thing which went always on ahead; and the man was Hafiz, the cook, who had been with Tarfa and had later wished to die. And Moussa, shuddering, told what the thing was, as he had seen it.

"Master, it was near to dark, and I and Hafiz took food and went to the shade of that mound and ate." He waved his hand at a hill of upturned earth and rubbish at a distance upon the left.