We crossed the tangi mouth, and passed on beyond under the frowning cliffs. Aryenis looked up the gorge with a little shiver as we passed. She must have been glad to see the last of it.
The going was not bad at the foot of the slope on the edge of the sand. Above us towered the cliffs, gaunt, bare rock, grey in the light of the growing dawn, and on our right was the trackless ocean of rippled sand with the dunes growing in height toward the horizon. The sky was colourless, and the stars, already faint in the moonlight, were rapidly paling before the coming sun, hidden from us as yet by the giant wall above. But the western sky flung back a faint reflection of the coming glory, and soon the western edge of the desert grew golden as the sun swung up and the mountains’ shadow shortened eastward toward us.
“The dawn is very beautiful, Harilek,” said Aryenis, pointing to the translucent sky and the golden light on the desert’s fringe. “I never thought to look on it again yesterday. Think you will be able to get me back home all right?” There was an anxious note in her voice.
“I hope so, Aryenis. But you’ve got to show us the way. Still, I don’t think we should have found you if we weren’t going to get you home. Some day I’ll tell you how we came here. To my mind it’s all too wonderful to be nothing but chance. I think it must have been meant. No, I think we shall get you home all right to the people who are waiting for you; your father and—who else?”
A sudden thought had struck me, a most unpleasing one. I’m not more sentimental than the average Englishman is underneath his veneer, but, after all, I had taken some trouble over Aryenis, and the idea of having salved some one else’s property was naturally unattractive. Besides, every moment seemed to show her as a person exceptionally worth taking trouble over. I had expected to find—if we did find white folk—something half-barbaric, and here was a distinctly cultured and exceptionally attractive girl.
“There’s my brother Stephnos and old Uncle Paulos and heaps more people. I’ve got lots of friends.”
I breathed a distinct sigh of relief. I didn’t mind taking trouble about salving people’s daughters or sisters or mere friends.
“Oh, Harilek. You said you thought you were meant to find me. What did you mean? Who meant it?”
“Who meant it? Why, who could mean a thing like that except one person? God, of course.”
“Did you say God or the gods?”