To her everlasting undoing, she paused for one moment to stretch her neck at length and eye the new menace. A fatal delay in which the offending object lighted upon and around her head, shutting her completely into outer darkness, whereupon she stood like a lamb whilst hobbles were placed about her feet; after which the shade was lifted slightly, leaving the eyes covered, whilst the blood-soaked thong was cut away from the torn flesh, and a kind of leather cage slipped over the muzzle, which would certainly prevent her from biting, or indulging in her usual wide yawn of indifference.
The covering being lifted from her eyes, her bonds were undone, and herself likened by the maker of sweet music, unto all that the Koran calls unclean, even unto the vilest of the vile, the pig, into the company of which she was relegated for all eternity. She was then ordered to ground in a manner reminiscent of the tones used to bazaar dogs, which order was emphasised with a flick of the courbaash upon a part which had known the meeting of Howesha's teeth.
But when at sunset Jill opened her eyes all sounds and signs of battle were stilled.
[1]Having four times successfully foaled a she-camel, Taffadaln, the Glory of the Desert, was ultimately shot on account of her demoniacal temper.
[2]The devil.
CHAPTER XIX
The sun was sinking when Jill moved, stretched a little, half opened her eyes, and closing them turned over and went to sleep again for about two minutes.
Then she half opened her eyes again, stretched out her hand to pull uncomprehendingly at the white netting round her bed, through which she could see a blaze of red, gold, and purple; and laughing in the vacant manner of the delirious, or those but half-awake, tried to collect her thoughts sufficiently to explain the strangeness of her surroundings, sitting up with a jerk as the doings of the last twenty-four hours suddenly stirred in her awakened mind.
Wide-eyed she sat with her hands clasped round her knees, whilst the deadly stillness seemed to rise as a wall around her, cutting her off from laughter, love, and life, until wild unreasoning fear, seizing her very soul, caused her to tear and rend the mosquito nets, and force a way through them and out of the tent.
For a while she stood holding to the tent rope, looking this way and that for the sign of some living thing. Before her stretched one vast plain of gravel, miles upon miles of it receding into nothingness, on each side the same, behind her tent above, the palm trees waving gently in the evening breeze, and above again, a sky such as is to be seen only in this part of the world, for travel you ever so widely, you will find nothing to rival a desert sunset in its design and colour.