While the conversation was going on, the other two merchants had headed their animals to the road; and in a minute after Harry Blount and Colin had parted with their old messmate Terence, without a hope of ever meeting him again.
Away,--trusting that the last hasty promise of the merchant to test their earnest story, and yield to the importunate desires which they had so long cherished, might not be unfulfilled.
Away,--out into the desert again; into that broad, barren wilderness of sand, stretching wearily on as far as eye could reach, and beyond the utmost limit of human steps, where the wild beasts almost fear to tread.
Away,--under the glare of the tropic sun, whose torrid beams fall from heavens that glow like hot walls of brass, and beat down through an atmosphere whose faint undulations in the breath of the desert wind ebb and flow over the parched travellers, like waves of a fiery sea; under a sun that seems to grow ever larger and brighter as the tired eyes, sick with beholding its yellow splendor overflowing all the world, yet turn toward it their fascinated gaze, and faint into burning dryness at its sight.
Away,--from the coolness of city walls, and the dark shadows of narrow, high-built streets, where the sunlight comes only at the height of noon, where men hide within doors as the hot hours draw nigh, and rest in silent chambers, or drowse away the time with _tchibouque_ or _narghileh_, whose softened odor of the rich Eastern tobacco floats up through perfumed waters and tubes of aromatic woods to leisurely lips, and curls in dim wreaths before restful eyelids half dropping to repose.
Away,--from the association of men in street, lane, bazaar, and market-place. No very profitable or happy association for the poor captives, one might think; and yet not so. For in every group of bystanders, or bevy of passers, they perchance might see him who should prove their angel of deliverance,--a kindly merchant, a new speculator, or even, by some event of gracious fortune, a countryman or a friend.
Away,--from all that they had borne and hoped, and borne and seen and suffered, into the desert whose paths lay invisible to them, mapped out in the keen intellects of their guides and guards, who read the streaming sand of Saära as sailors read the wilds of sweeping seas, but whose dusky faces, as inscrutable as the barren wastes, revealed no trace of the secret of the path they led,--whether indeed the great Moorish Empire were their destination, or whether they turned their steps to some unknown and untried goal.