We swooped downward.  We passed near the tree.  The woman screamed to us to stop, and held up an infant.  Christina and Estella and all the other women wept.  We passed the tree—­the despairing cries of the woman were dreadful to listen to.  But she takes courage; sees us sweep about; we come slowly back; we stop; a rope ladder falls; I descend; I grasp the child’s clothes between my teeth; I help the woman up the ladder.  She falls upon the deck of the ship, and cries out in French:  “Spare my child!” Dreadful period! when every human being is looked upon as a murderer.  The women comfort her.  Her clothes are in rags, but upon her fingers are costly jewels.  Her babe is restored to her arms; she faints with hunger and exhaustion.  For three days, she tells us, she has been hidden in that tree, without food or drink; and has seen all dear to her perish—­all but her little Francois.  And with what delight Estella and Christina and the rest cuddle and feed the pretty, chubby, hungry little stranger!

Thank God for the angel that dwells in human nature.  And woe unto him who bids the devil rise to cast it out!

Max, during all this day, is buried in profound thought.  He looks out at the desolated world and sighs.  Even Christina fails to attract his attention.  Why should he be happy when there is so much misery?  Did he not help to cause it?

But, after a time, we catch sight of the blue and laughing waters of the Mediterranean, with its pleasant, bosky islands.  This is gone, and in a little while the yellow sands of the great desert stretch beneath us, and extend ahead of us, far as the eye can reach.  We pass a toiling caravan, with its awkward, shuffling, patient camels, and its dark attendants.  They have heard nothing, in these solitudes, of the convulsions that rend the world.  They pray to Allah and Mahomet and are happy.  The hot, blue, cloudless sky rises in a great dome above their heads; their food is scant and rude, but in their veins there burn not those wild fevers of ambition which have driven mankind to such frenzies and horrors.  They live and die as their ancestors did, ten thousand years ago—­unchangeable as the stars above their heads; and these are even as they shone clear and bright when the Chaldean shepherds first studied the outlines of the constellations, and marked the pathways of the wandering planets.

Before us, at last, rise great blue masses, towering high in air, like clouds, and extending from east to west; and these, in a little while, as we rush on, resolve themselves into a mighty mountain range, snow-capped, with the yellow desert at its feet, stretching out like a Persian rug.

I direct the pilot, and in another hour the great ship begins to abate its pace; it sweeps in great circles.  I see the sheep flying terrified by our shadow; then the large, roomy, white-walled house, with its broad verandas, comes into view; and before it, looking up at us in surprise, are my dear mother and brothers, and our servants.