No wheeled vehicle that ever man made could have passed up this new track.  It was difficult for ridden horses, and our loaded beasts had to be given time.  We seemed to be entering by a fissure into the womb of the savage hills that tossed themselves in ever-increasing grandeur up toward the mist-draped heights of Kara Dagh.  Oftener than not our track was obviously watercourse, although now and then we breasted higher levels from which we could see, through gaps between hill and forest, backward along the way we had come.  There was smoke from the direction of Adana that smudged a whole sky-line, and between that and the sea about a dozen sooty columns mushroomed against the clouds.

There was not a mile of the way we came that did not hold a hundred hiding-places fit for ambuscade, but our party was too numerous and well-armed to need worry on that account.  Monty and Kagig drew ahead, quite a little way behind the gipsies still, but far in front of us, who had to keep Fred upright on his horse.

“My particular need is breakfast,” said I.

“And Will’s is the woman!” said Fred, admitting himself awake at last.  Will had been straining in the stirrups on the top of every rise his horse negotiated ever since the sun rose.  It certainly was a mystery why Maga should have been spirited away, after the freedom permitted her the day before.

“Rustum Khan has probably made off with her, or cut her head off!” remarked Fred by way of offering comfort, yawning with the conscious luxury of having slept.  “I don’t see Rustum Khan.  Let’s hope it’s true!  That ’ud give the American lady a better chance for her life in case we should overtake her!”

Will and Fred have always chosen the most awkward places and the least excuse for horseplay, and the sleep seemed to have expelled the last of the fever from Fred’s bones, so that he felt like a schoolboy on holiday.  Will grabbed him around the neck and they wrestled, to their horses’ infinite disgust, panting and straining mightily in the effort to unseat each other.  It was natural that Will should have the best of it, he being about fifteen years younger as well as unweakened by malaria.  The men of Zeitoon behind us checked to watch Fred rolled out of his saddle, and roared with the delight of fighting men the wide world over to see the older campaigner suddenly recover his balance and turn the tables on the younger by a trick.

And at that very second, as Will landed feet first on the gravel panting for breath, Maga Jhaere arrived full gallop from the rear, managing her ugly gray stallion with consummate ease.  Her black hair streamed out in the wind, and what with the dew on it and the slanting sun-rays she seemed to be wearing all the gorgeous jewels out of Ali Baba’s cave.  She was the loveliest thing to look at —­unaffected, unexpected, and as untamed as the dawn, with parted lips as red as the branch of budding leaves with which she beat her horse.