Payindah full of blood and battle. Wants to know who the “mem” is?
J. W.
I explained things to Firoz, and went up to the tent door and peeped in. The girl was asleep, her eyes closed, and her breathing slow and regular. Evidently Forsyth’s medicine was working all right.
Then, feeling thoroughly tired, I told Firoz to keep awake, curled up in Wrexham’s bedding again, and in a few minutes, despite a very tender face, was asleep. A somewhat broken sleep it was, full of dreams about arrows and savage men, sometimes my mail-jacketed friends of the afternoon, sometimes older souvenirs; and in the midst of them all a vision, big hazel-grey eyes, a very kissable kind of mouth, and a cloud of red-gold hair over white shoulders. Then once a picture of all that with a slim white body waiting bravely for death, and lastly, a sweet, low voice saying, “Good-night, Harilek; good-night ... and thank you.” I had no more dreams after that.
CHAPTER X
BELOW THE CLIFFS
It was past four o’clock when Forsyth woke me up, and I rolled out of my blankets into the cold dawn. The wind had dropped now, however.
“Time to turn out, old thing,” he said. “We’ve got to be under way by six. How’s the face?”
“A bit sore,” said I, as I tightened up my chaplis. “Where’s John?”
“Still sitting up at the end of the pass. He’s not coming back. We’re to pack up and start off to the east. He and Payindah will stay there till it’s light, and then come away following us as rear-guard. Nothing happened all the time I was there. But old Wrexham’s a hard nut. Wish I had half his nerve. He went crawling among the bones nearly up to the gate to look-see.”
Firoz was setting out cups and plates on the yakhdans by the light of a hurricane-lamp. In the moonlight I could see the camels kneeling down and Sadiq carrying up loads. Evidently Forsyth had been busy since he came back.