As the miles sped by, the girl was aware of nothing except a desire to get further and further away from her lover, and to keep her seat on the horse.
Then she became aware of something else.
For the horse halted and she fell off, flat on the soft sand.
Shaken, but not hurt, she sat up and gazed around.
A little oasis had been reached, where date palms stood black against the all-prevailing silver, and a tiny spring bubbled with cheerful whisper.
When the Sultan took his namesake out for exercise, this was the extreme limit of their ride—the horse had been there once already that day—and in the shade of the date palms the man and the horse would rest awhile before returning to the city.
But Pansy knew none of these things. She only knew that valuable time was being lost sitting there on the ground. But it was such an effort to get up.
Green eyes had seen her fall as if dead. The hyenas crept stealthily forward to feast upon what lay helpless in the sand. But when she sat up they retreated, to squat on their haunches at a safe distance, and fill the night with demoniacal laughter.
The sound brought Pansy to her feet, swaying with fatigue. She had heard it before, around her father's camp in Gambia.
But it was one thing to hear the hyenas when there were thirty or more people between herself and them, and another now that she was quite alone in the desert, with no one to come to her aid.