“But is it far?”
“Half the distance that it would be were we to return to the place we left this morning.”
“Forward, then. Come, Lawrence, you must walk as far as you can, and then I will stay with you, and we will send the others forward for help.”
“I do not feel so tired now,” said the lad. “I am ready.”
Yussuf took the lead again and they set off, walking steadily on straight past the cliff-dwellings, and the ruins by the cave, till they reached the spot in the beautifully-wooded vale where, from far above, they had seen the horsemen pass, little thinking at the time that they were bearing off their strong helps to a journey through the mountains, and all the food.
Here the beaten track curved off to the left, and the traces left by the horses were plain enough to see, for there was a little patch of marshy ground made by a little spring here, and this they had passed, Yussuf eagerly scanning them, and making out that somewhere about twelve horses had crossed here, and there were also the footprints of five or six men.
“If we go this way we may overtake the scoundrels,” said the old lawyer, “but it will not do. Yussuf, I am a man of peace, and I should prove to be a very poor creature in another fight. I had quite enough to last me the rest of my life on board that boat. Here, let’s rest a few hours.”
“No, excellency; we must go on, even if it is slowly. This part of the valley is marshy, and there are fevers caught here. I have been along here twice, and there is a narrow track over that shoulder of the mountain that we can easily follow afoot, though we could not take horses. It is far shorter, too. Can the young effendi walk so far?”
Lawrence declared that he could, for the mountain air gave him strength. So they left the beaten track, to continue along a narrow water-course for a couple of miles, and then rapidly ascend the side of one of the vast masses of cliff, the path being literally a shelf in places not more than a foot wide, with the mountain on their left rising up like a wall, and on their right the rock sank right down to the stream, which gurgled among the masses of stone which had fallen from above, a couple of hundred feet below them and quite out of sight.
“’Pon my word, Yussuf, this is a pretty sort of a place!” panted Mr Burne. “Hang it, man! It is dangerous.”