Out of the Triangle: A Story of the Far East

by Mary E. Bamford

"Where art thou?" savagely called the man. "Where?"

He ran hither and thither with fiercely muttered imprecations. Now his footsteps sounded farther off, and now again he ran back and came softly stealing around among the rocks. Timokles laid his branded cheek against the gravel, and waited.

The footsteps went, and came, and went again in the dark. Timokles trembled from head to foot. He did not fear death, but he dreaded capture and unknown terrors.

The dark form passed by again. A chill went over Timokles, as he thought he saw a weapon in the man's hand.

The footsteps became inaudible once more. Timokles, waiting a long time, imagined his foe might have gone. As the lad was about to lift his head, a hand brushed along the side of his rock, and reached out into the dark, underneath. Timokles was perfectly quiet. The hand above him felt down the sides of the rock, waved in the darkness above the boy, descended and rested an instant on the gravel next him—but did not touch him. The silent menace of the groping hand was terrible. Timokles held his breath.

The hand passed on, feeling of other rocks.

"O God of thy people, thou hast hidden me!" cried Timokles in his heart, as he heard the soft rubbing of his enemy's hand against the farther rocks.

The sound died away. Timokles lay listening for a long time. Once he thought he heard a creeping sound, but it was only the wind.

Sleep came upon him at last, and when he woke it was day. He dared not come out, but lay there through the torrid hours, moistening his lips now and then with a little water from the small, skin water-pouch he carried.

The sun plunged beneath the horizon at last, with the usual seeming suddenness observed in the desert. Night was welcome to Timokles, and he came forth. The lad's heart was very lonely. He looked toward the northeast, and remembered his Alexandrian home—his mother, the brother with whom Timokles' whole life had been bound up, the little sister Cocce, whom Timokles had last seen playing gleefully with a toy crocodile, and laughing at its opening mouth.