“But they can find no trace.”
“They are on the track we left, far above, before we entered the stream. If they cannot scent us in the water, they will have the sense to follow us downstream, keeping a dog on each bank in ease we leave it.”
“What shall we do?” asked the helpless men.
Above them the rocks rose wild and horrent, apparently inaccessible, but the keen eye of our Hubert detected one path, a mere goat path, used perhaps also by shepherds.
“Follow me,” he said, and leaving the stream ascended the path, a veritable mauvais pas. At the height of some two hundred feet it struck inward through a wild region.
“Here we must make a stand at this summit,” said Hubert, “and meet the dogs. I will give a good account of them.”
He descended a little way to a point where the dogs could only ascend by a very narrow cleft in the rocks, and there he waited for the first dog. Soon a hideous black hound appeared, and with flashing eyes and gaping jaws sprang at our hero. He was received with a sweep of the scimitar, which cleft his diabolical head in twain, and he rolled down the deep declivity, all mangled and bleeding, to the foot, missing the path and falling from rock to rock, so that when he was found by the party who followed they could not tell by what means he had received his first wound.
And when the other dogs arrived at the spot, which was deluged in gore, after the wont of their race they would follow the scent no farther.
Meanwhile our little party of five rescued captives went joyfully forward with renewed hope, until midday, when they found a cool spot by the side of the streams leading to the waters of Merom—the head waters of the Jordan. And there, under a date tree which afforded them food, they watched in turn until the sun was low; after which they renewed their journey.
Soon they left the smaller lake behind, and followed the waters of the Upper Jordan to the Sea of Galilee, skirting its western shore, so rich in sacred memories, with the ruins of Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Magdala, and other cities, long ago trodden: