The covering being lifted from her eyes, her bonds were undone, and herself likened by the maker of sweet music, unto all that the Koran calls unclean, even unto the vilest of the vile, the pig, into the company of which she was relegated for all eternity.  She was then ordered to ground in a manner reminiscent of the tones used to bazaar dogs, which order was emphasised with a flick of the courbaash upon a part which had known the meeting of Howesha’s teeth.

But when at sunset Jill opened her eyes all sounds and signs of battle were stilled.

[1]Having four times successfully foaled a she-camel, Taffadaln, the Glory of the Desert, was ultimately shot on account of her demoniacal temper.

[2]The devil.

CHAPTER XIX

The sun was sinking when Jill moved, stretched a little, half opened her eyes, and closing them turned over and went to sleep again for about two minutes.

Then she half opened her eyes again, stretched out her hand to pull uncomprehendingly at the white netting round her bed, through which she could see a blaze of red, gold, and purple; and laughing in the vacant manner of the delirious, or those but half-awake, tried to collect her thoughts sufficiently to explain the strangeness of her surroundings, sitting up with a jerk as the doings of the last twenty-four hours suddenly stirred in her awakened mind.

Wide-eyed she sat with her hands clasped round her knees, whilst the deadly stillness seemed to rise as a wall around her, cutting her off from laughter, love, and life, until wild unreasoning fear, seizing her very soul, caused her to tear and rend the mosquito nets, and force a way through them and out of the tent.

For a while she stood holding to the tent rope, looking this way and that for the sign of some living thing.  Before her stretched one vast plain of gravel, miles upon miles of it receding into nothingness, on each side the same, behind her tent above, the palm trees waving gently in the evening breeze, and above again, a sky such as is to be seen only in this part of the world, for travel you ever so widely, you will find nothing to rival a desert sunset in its design and colour.

Above her head seemed to be stretched a canopy, made by some Eastern magic, of a mixture of colours woven by the hands of Love and Hate, Passion and Revenge, underneath which she stood disheartened, dishevelled, in crumpled clothes and shoeless feet, with fear-distended eyes in a fatigue-shadowed face, searching vainly for something alive and near, be it human, dog, horse or camel.

Owing to a sudden nervous reaction brought about by the cessation of all physical and mental effort, the girl’s power of reasoning had gone, along with her will, her common sense, and her fearlessness.

That there was another tent beside her own made no more impression on her mind than the fact that a slight smoke haze softened the intense blue of the sky on her right.