"The art comes at the finish, Ma'am——"
"Well, call me when it comes," said the Black Queen, "and keep her off the nurseries, and clean that eleventh cell of mine, and wait till I come back. She soared up skywards, fussily, cleared the cliff's head, circled three times about, and set a straight course south.
"Good riddance!" said the Mistress of the Robes.
"They're like that everywhere," said Spinipes. "What are her nurseries to me? Black Queens and black sand go together. Now this is red sand. I feel the grip and bind of it."
In Sand, Ma'am, in Sand. See, she's starting now
She was quite right. The ledge was rain-washed silt. Sunshine had bleached the outer crust of it, but, under this, its substance was brick-red—fine ground stuff too, damp, clingy, easily tunnelled, and easily smarmed into a hold-fast mortar.
"In that case," said the Mistress of the Robes, "I may as well be going."
Slowly she floated off the ledge, yet kept her face towards it. Slowly she tacked from side to side, in dipping, widening sweeps. Slowly she passed the cliff's east edge, and disappeared.
Then Spinipes commenced to dig in earnest.