Sarchedon: A Legend of the Great Queen

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sarchedon, by G. J. (George John) Whyte-Melville, Illustrated by S. E. Waller
London Ward, Lock & Co., Limited New York and Melbourne
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AUSTIN LAYARD, D.C.L., HER MAJESTY'S MINISTER AT MADRID, THE FOLLOWING ROMANCE IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, AS A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION TO THE GREAT DISCOVERER, WHOSE SKILL, COURAGE AND RESEARCH HAVE EXCAVATED FROM THE DESERT SANDS THE ARTS, ARMS, AND RECORDS OF A MIGHTY NATION; WHOSE LEARNING AND PERSEVERANCE HAVE RESTORED AN IMPORTANT LINK IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY, LONG SEVERED IN THE OBLIVION OF THE PAST.
Onslow Gardens, June, 1871 .
They watch him who wakes—They watch him who sleeps—him who speaks—him who is silent—the guilty, the blameless: there is none on earth who is not watched. — Bhuddhagosa Proverbs.
From love comes grief, from love comes fear; he who is free from love knows neither grief nor fear. — Bhuddhagosa Proverbs.
Your sin follows steadily behind, as the cart-wheel follows the draught-bullock. — Bhuddhagosa Proverbs.
Dying in the desert—stretched, limp and helpless, in the darkening waste—poured out like water on the tawny sand—two specks poised high above him in the deeper orange of the upper sky—a wide-winged vulture hovering and wheeling between the stricken lion and the setting sun.
Dying in the desert—grim, dignified, unyielding, like a monarch slain in battle. So formidable in the morning—the herdsman's terror, the archer's dread, the savage wrestler in whose grasp horse and rider went down crushed, mangled, over-matched, like sucking fawn and unweaned child—fierce, tameless, unconquered—a noble adversary for the noblest champions of the plain—but ere the last red streak of evening faded on the dusky level of their wilderness, a thing for the foul night-bird to tear and buffet—for the wild ass, wincing and snorting, half in terror, half in scorn, to spurn and trample with her hoof.
Pitiful in its hopelessness, the wistful pleading of eyes gradually waning to the apathy of death; pitiful the long flickering tongue, licking with something of a dog's homely patience that fatal gash of which the pain grew every moment more endurable, only because it was a death-wound; and pitiful too the utter prostration of those massive limbs, with knotted muscles and corded sinews—of that long, lean, tapering body—the very emblem of agile strength—which, striving in agony to rear but half its height, sank down again in dust, writhing, powerless, like an earthworm beneath the spade.