"That bird is hurrying with such might to save its life. Shall my strength fail when I am hastening to the man I love? 'For shame, little one!' he would say." Smiling through her tears, she ran forward. So an hour passed--many hours.
Often she thought that she must have lost the right direction, or she would have reached the battlefield long ago. The wind had risen to a tempest. Her heart beat with suffocating strength. Giddiness seized her; she tottered; she must rest. Now, here, no Vandal could overtake her to keep her by force from her sacred goal.
Just at that moment something white appeared above the sand close beside her. It was the first break for hours in the monotonous yellow surface. The object was no stone. Seizing it, Eugenia dragged it from the sand. Oh, despair and horror! She shrieked aloud in desperation, in terror, in the sense of cheerless, hopeless helplessness. It was her own shoe, which she had lost hours before. She had been wandering in a circle. Or had the wind borne it far away from the place where she lost it? Yet, no! The shoe, which she now flung down, weeping, was swiftly covered with sand, instead of being carried away by the wind. After exhausting the last remnant of her strength, she was in the same spot.
To die--now--to give up all effort--to rest--to sleep--now sweet was the temptation to the wearied limbs.
But, no! To him! What were the words? "And it constrained the faithful one and drew her to the grave of the dead hero." To him!
Eugenia raised herself with great difficulty, she was already so weak. And when she had barely gained her feet, the storm blew her down once more. Again she rose, trying to see if some human being, some house, if not the path, was visible. Just then she perceived before her in the north a sand-hill, higher than any of the others. It was probably more than a hundred feet. If she could succeed in climbing it, she would be able from the top to get a wide view. With inexpressible difficulty, sinking knee-deep at nearly every step in the looser sand, until her foot reached the older, firmer soil, she pressed upward, often falling back several paces when she stumbled. While she did so the strangest, most alarming thing happened,--at every slip the whole sand-hill creaked, trembled, and began to slide down in every direction. At first Eugenia stopped in terror; she thought the whole mountain would sink with her. But she conquered her fear, and at last climbed upward on her knees, for she could no longer stand; she thrust her hands into the sand and dragged herself up. The wind--no, it was now a hurricane--assisted her; it blew from south to north. At last--the climb seemed to her longer than the whole previous way--at last she reached the top. Opening her eyes, which she had kept half closed, she saw--oh, bliss! she saw deliverance. Before her, at a long distance, it is true, yet plainly visible, glittered a steel-blue line. It was the sea! And at the side, eastward, she fancied she saw houses, trees. Surely that was Decimum; and a little farther inland rose a dark hill-- the end of the desert. She imagined,--yet surely it was impossible to see so far,--she believed or dreamed that, on the summit of the hill, she beheld three slender black lines relieved against the clear horizon. Surely those were the three spears on the grave. "Beloved One! My hero!" she cried, "I am coming."
With outstretched arms she tried to hurry down the sand-hill on the northeastern: side, but, at the first step, she sank in to the knee,--deeper still, to the waist. She could still see the blue sky above her. Once more, with her last strength, she flung both arms high above her head, thrusting her hands into the sand to the wrists to drag herself up; once more the large beautiful antelope eyes gazed beseechingly--ah, so despairingly--up to the silent sky; another wild, desperate pull--a hollow sound as of a heavy fall. The whole sand-mountain, shaken by her struggles and swept by the hurricane from the south, fell over her northward, burying her nearly a hundred feet deep, stifling her in a moment. Above her lofty grave the desert storm raved exultingly.
* * * * *
For decades the beautiful corpse lay undisturbed, unprofaned, until that ever-changing architect, the wind, gradually removed the sand-hill and, one stormy night, at last blew it away entirely.
Just at that time a pious hermit, one of the desert monks who begged his scanty fare in Decimum and carried it to his sand cave, passed along. Often and often he had come that way; the hurricane had bared the skeleton only the day before. The old man stood before it, thoughtful. The little dazzlingly white bones were so dainty, so delicate, as if fashioned by an artist's hand; the garments, like the flesh, had long been completely consumed by the trickling moisture; but the lofty sand ridge had faithfully kept its beautiful secret, not a bone was missing. For a human generation the dry sand of the desert, though garments and flesh had gone to decay, had preserved uninjured the outlines of the figure as it had been pressed into the sand under the heavy weight. One could see that the buried girl had tried to protect eyes and mouth with her right hand; the left lay in a graceful attitude across her breast; her face was turned toward the ground.