He hailed them angrily from the valley, but they took not the slightest notice, only blew more weirdly and beat the louder. He tried to get up to them, but discovered that in order to do so he must ride round for five miles. This he accomplished at last, only to find that they were gone, having probably slipped down the slope of the mountain away into their home, the desert. Indeed, it was reported to him afterwards that some people, accompanied by two donkeys, had been seen in the distance tramping across the sand.
“Why are you so vexed, Rupert?” asked Mea, when they descended the cliffs again, after their fruitless search.
“I don’t know,” he answered, with a laugh, “but that music is associated with disagreeable recollections in my mind. The first time we heard it, you remember, was just before I lost my foot and eye, and the next time was as I embarked upon the ship on my way to England, an unhappy journey. What have they come for now, I wonder?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, with her sweet smile; “but I at least have no cause to fear them. After their first visit I saved you; after their second you came back to me.”
“And after their third—?” asked Rupert.
“After their third I have said, I do not know; but perhaps it means that we shall take a long journey together.”
“If that’s all, I don’t care,” he replied. “What I dread is our taking journeys away from each other.”
“I thank you,” she answered, bowing to him gravely, “your words are pleasant to me, and I bless those musicians who made you speak them, as I am sure that our roads branch no more.”
So, still smiling at each other like two happy children, they rode on. They visited the salt works which Rupert had established to the enormous benefit of everyone in the oasis.
Passing through groves of young date-palms that he had planted, they came to the breeding grounds of camels, mules, and horses, the last of which had attained a great reputation, and having inspected the studs, turned back through the irrigated lands that now each year produced two crops instead of one.