The guide agreed to halt, but would permit no fire. Harry appeased his appetite with some wild fruit he had procured on the margin of the desert, and then lay down to sleep. In less than a minute he was buried in the deepest slumber.
It seemed to him he had not been sleeping for more than an hour when the guide took him by the shoulder and shook him lightly.
Harry Urquhart looked about him.
"It is still dark," said he.
"The dawn comes," said the man, as if that clinched the matter once and for all.
"Have you not slept?" asked Harry.
"Does the hound sleep," said Fernando, with a grim smile, "with the fox in view? Remember, I have sworn to the saints."
When they had eaten such of the desert fruit as remained over from the previous day, they set forward on their journey, the guide leading as before.
They traversed valley after valley, the guide selecting the route, as it seemed, by some kind of natural instinct similar to that which will lead a cat to find its way across unknown country. Though during that morning they saw nothing of the Arab, Fernando was certain that the Black Dog was not many miles ahead. Every time they reached a hill-top, he screened his eyes with a hand and examined the surrounding country for signs of the fugitive, who, they were convinced, was making back to the Caves of Zoroaster.
They were returning to the hills of Maziriland by a route that lay far to the south of that of their former journey. The mountains here were not so high as those farther to the north. For all that, they were exceedingly desolate and rugged. They were in a land where nothing appeared to live. There were no villages; neither cattle nor sheep grazed upon the lowlands.