The chorus of mad, mocking mirth brought fear clutching at her, a fear that the horse's wild snorts increased. She looked round sharply to find there were at least a dozen of the brutes on her trail.
It was not Pansy's nature to show fear, even though she felt it.
Going to the spring, she picked up several large stones, and threw them at the hyenas.
A note of fear crept into their hideous voices. They beat a swift retreat, melting away into distance. There was too much life left in the girl and horse for them to attack as yet.
Gathering her tired self together Pansy looked round for a rock high enough to enable her to mount by. As it happened there was none handy. Taking her horse by the mane, she led him from the oasis. Somewhat protestingly he went.
Pansy had to stagger on for nearly a mile on foot, in the deep, fatiguing sand, before she could find a tussock high enough to mount by.
Once on, she left the route to her horse.
To the uninitiated, one portion of the desert looks very similar to another. And the girl had no idea that the horse was retracing his steps, making his way slowly and laboriously back to El-Ammeh.
She had not the strength left even to look around her. The hot night, the long ride, the sickly excitement attached to escaping, the thirst that now raged within her, and the final tiring walk, after months of inactivity, had told upon her. Utterly worn out, she just managed to keep her seat, in a world that had become a place of aching weariness, through which there rang occasional wild shrieks of laughter.
Then it became impossible to cling on any longer.