For some time they could do nothing but sit helplessly where they were, watching with dull eyes what seemed the persistent efforts of the fire to reach them. Tongues of flame shot out of the burning mass and licked the bare hillside, then sank back thwarted, only to make a further attempt to pursue the fugitives and drive them from their refuge. The fire was no longer inanimate; it was a sentient and malign creature, determined that its prey should not escape. Its efforts ceased at last for lack of fuel, and the castaways on the ledge were able to think of other things. Murtiza Khan began to improvise a sling with a strip torn from his turban, and Lady Haigh, wondering what he could intend to aim at, saw that a little higher up the nullah one of the forest antelopes had taken refuge on a ledge similar to their own. She turned on the trooper angrily--
“What, Murtiza Khan! so lately saved and so soon anxious to destroy? Let the creature escape, as God has allowed us.”
“As the Presence wills,” said Murtiza Khan, with resignation, while the antelope, catching the sound of human voices, took alarm and bounded away. “I was but desirous of providing food, for we have here only some broken _chapatis_. Is it the will of the Presence that we should leave this place, and seek to find some dwelling of men in these mountains?”
“No,” said Lady Haigh shortly, “we wait here for the Sahib. If he is alive he will seek us; if not, we will seek him.”
The trooper did not venture to offer any opposition, and Lady Haigh returned to her former attitude, gazing over the smoky waste, from which the blackened trunk of a tall tree protruded here and there. She had some biscuits in her plant-case, which she shared with Penelope, and Murtiza Khan and the grooms made a meal of the fragments discovered in the trooper’s saddle-bags, after which the three men went to sleep, having duly asked and received permission. Lady Haigh and Penelope scarcely spoke at all through the long hot thirsty hours that followed. The sun beat down on them, reflected from the steep walls of the nullah; but if they moved into the shade lower down, they would lose the view. The fire had long burned itself out, and the smoke-clouds lifted gradually, disclosing a gloomy expanse of black ashes. The ground had been cleared so thoroughly that it seemed as if it ought to be possible to see as far as the spot where the camp had been, but the air was still too hazy, a dull grey taking the place of the ordinary intense blue of the sky. There was no sign of life anywhere on the plain which had been forest, but as the afternoon wore on Penelope started suddenly.