“It is dreary work to rest without food,” said Yussuf, “but it might be better to get on to the spring yonder, and pick out a sheltered place among the rocks, where we could lie down and sleep for a few hours, till the moon rises, and then continue our journey.”
“That’s the plan, Yussuf; agreed nem con,” cried Mr Burne.
“Perhaps it will be best,” said Mr Preston, and they journeyed on for another half hour, till they reached the gap which their guide had pointed out, one which proved to be the embouchure of another ravine, along the bottom of which meandered a rough road that had probably never been repaired since the Romans ruled the land.
“Let us go a little way in,” said Yussuf; “we shall then be sheltered from the wind. It will blow coldly when the sun has set.”
He led the way into a wild and awful-looking chasm, for the shadows were growing deeper, and to the weary and hungry travellers the place had a strangely forbidding look, suggestive of hidden dangers. But for the calm and confident way in which Yussuf marched forward, the others would have hesitated to plunge into a gorge of so weird a character, until the sun had lightened its gloomy depths.
“I think this will do,” said Yussuf, as they turned an angle about a couple of hundred yards from the entrance. “I will climb up here first. These rocks look cave-like and offer shelter. Hist!”
He held up his hand, for a trampling sound seemed to come from the face of the rocks a couple of hundred feet above them, and all involuntarily turned to gaze up at a spot where the shadows were blackest.
All except Yussuf, who gazed straight onward into the ravine.
It was strange. There was quite a precipice up there, and it was impossible for people to be walking. What was more strange, there was the trampling of horses’ feet, and then it struck the professor that they were listening to the echoes of the sounds made by a party some distance in.
“How lucky!” said Mr Burne. “People coming. We shall get something to eat.”