Just then Forsyth came up and suggested our halting for a while. Wrexham and Payindah ought to be up with us, for we had been going over two hours. If not, we ought to wait, and, if they did not come soon, go back.
We dismounted and caused Aryenis intense astonishment with our pipes. Evidently tobacco was unknown in the Sakae country. However, a shock or two more was nothing after the number she’d had. But the box of matches intrigued her tremendously. I think, after the mirror, the matches were the thing which took her fancy most of all. Both were articles of practical utility, whereas guns and watches—especially watches—were obviously inconsequential frills to the feminine mind, playthings for the stupider sex, but of no use to the more practical one intent on much bigger problems of dress and the household. Aryenis, like most women, had only three times she took notice of—past, Present (with a capital P), and future. The idea of a finicky division into hours and minutes struck her severely logical mind as absolutely unnecessary.
The more I saw of Aryenis, the more convinced did I become that woman—the ever-changing—never changes at all in reality. Except that Aryenis is much nicer-looking and cleverer, there is not the slightest difference between her and the various women I used to meet at home.
Half an hour later Wrexham and Payindah came up, the latter carrying the steel cap of the first fellow I had killed. The irrepressible Wrexham had collected it as a souvenir. Nothing would have induced me to crawl out into the clearing under the gate merely to gather a useless bit of loot.
He said that they had seen no signs of life all night, save for the lights mentioned in his note. At daybreak some arrows had been fired rather aimlessly from the loopholes toward the gorge, whereupon he and Payindah had opened rapid fire at the arrow-slits, and the arrows forthwith ceased for good.
After spending an hour sniping the gate at longer and longer intervals, they had connected up the booby-traps Wrexham had prepared with his little tin of powder and slipped noiselessly away.
He reckoned the enemy would not venture to follow us for a while, and if they did the booby-traps would stop them the first time they tried, even if not indefinitely. All five of the men in the clearing were dead now, and no effort had been made from the gate to get them in, so the enemy were obviously pretty panicky. Still, for the rest of the time we were under the cliffs we never dispensed with a sentry at night.
We travelled steadily for three days, following the line of cliffs, which curved very gradually toward the northeast, with, to our right, always the waste of sand. Aryenis told us that, as far as she knew, the whole country was ringed with hills and surrounded by desert on all sides. According to her, it was a big country, since it was six days’ journey from one side to the other even on horseback. Allowing twenty miles a day as a maximum, and taking off something for the roads being winding, as they must be in a country obviously hilly, that meant at least a hundred miles across. As a matter of fact, our estimate proved pretty accurate, for later on Wrexham made a rough survey of it, and it was over the hundred in length and nearly seventy in breadth.
The marches were as monotonous as the one across the desert had been, and we saw no signs of life and found no water. It was lucky we had been able to water the animals and fill up our tanks before we started from the gate. The camels were now very gaunt and getting weak, for we had had to reduce their ration to a minimum. It was clear that, if we could not get into the country, our chances of ever getting back home again were small, since the camels would be too weak for the long marches back across the desert, even although we had water. They wanted rest and grazing badly. Still, I think that none of us felt really depressed, since up to date things had worked out so extraordinarily well. The rain in the desert and our finding Aryenis both served to strengthen our idea that we were meant to get through.
Aryenis herself kept our spirits up. She had quite recovered her own, and the prospect of getting back to her home, of which she was clearly passionately fond, kept her ever cheerful, even despite the trials of her wardrobe.