“Yes, yes,” cried Bourne; “on at any cost, to get away from this horrible nest of reptiles.”
“But suppose we go blundering on among them,” cried Wilton. “What do you say, Griggs?”
“I say let’s get on, sir, for if we stop here we shall be getting no nearer water, and we shall be having the snakes coming to see where we are for killing that last one of their friends.”
To get away from the horrors that haunted the spot was the great desire of all, and with the doctor and Griggs leading, the first a little in advance, and bearing the light, so as to avoid the blocks of stone projecting from the sand, the little party went slowly on hour after hour, ready to stop again and again to throw themselves down and rest. But no one dared to do so lest the jar given to the earth should send some of the poisonous reptiles to the surface in search of the enemy that had intruded upon the solitude which they seemed from their numbers to have marked down for their own domain.
The greater part of that night seemed to the two boys like a feverish dream, during which they had been compelled by some strange force to keep plodding on through horrors unspeakable, and tortured by a thirst that was maddening.
At times, where the stones lay thick, hardly a word was spoken, but now and again Chris would begin questioning his companion loudly, eager to obtain his opinion as to whether he did not think it must be nearly morning.
But Ned’s answers were not encouraging. There was no romance in them; they were too near the truth to suit Chris, and he liked them the less because at heart he felt that they must be correct and his own hopes too sanguine. But all the same he clung to his own ideas—they were so tempting. They were that with daylight they should have reached the end of the wild desert, and that from high up on some sunlit slope they would be gazing down into a broad green valley—some natural paradise through which flowed a rippling stream.
He described his notions to Ned, who seemed to be listening attentively in the darkness, and now and then said “Oh,” or “Ah, yes;” but all the time he was clinging involuntarily to his saddle, his head nodding forward again and again, only to be brought back to the perpendicular with a jerk, while Chris was too drowsy himself to notice it, as he went muttering on.
“It won’t be the place where the gold city and temple are, Ned,” he said; “but it will be just the spot where we can rest for a few days.”
“Ah!” said Ned.