A while they lay concealed among the long fern, and then rising up, Ahmed looked carefully around him; the party was long out of sight, and they proceeded with light hearts and buoyant steps.
Ahmed had not overrated his knowledge of the mountains; he led Herbert along the edge of the stream for a while, and as they went along Herbert pulled wild flowers,—the flowers of his own England. Woodbine and wild rose, archis and wild hyacinth, and the graceful cyclamen, and fern and violets; and the more familiar buttercup and wild anemone. ‘They know not that such a paradise exists in this land,’ he said, ‘and these shall be my tokens; even as the spies brought grapes and figs to the children of Israel in the desert.’
Hardly now he heeded the lovely scenery that was around him everywhere, among which the round top of his old prison occupied a conspicuous place, clothed with wood to its very summit; and its precipitous sides rising out of the huge chasm that now lay between him and it, at the bottom of which roared the Baraudee, leaping from ledge to ledge in foam, in an endless succession of cataracts. Now and then they would catch glimpses of the blue plain beyond which melted into the horizon; and the deep and gloomy ravine on their right hand presented an endless variety of views, of such exquisite beauty, that Herbert would often stop breathless to contemplate in admiration of their loveliness, for which his companion appeared to have no eyes.
They had now travelled for some hours, and the road had been a toilsome one, owing to the constantly recurring deep valleys which broke into the ravine we have mentioned.
It was now evening; the sun was sinking into the west amidst clouds of glory, and the huge shadows of the mountains were fast creeping over the plain. The precipices of Hulleekul-droog shone like gold under the red light, which, resting upon the vast forests and hanging woods, caused them to glow with a thousand rich tints; and wherever a small oozing of water spread itself down a naked rock, it glittered so that the eye could hardly behold it.
‘Art thou fatigued, Sahib?’ asked Ahmed; ‘thou hast borne this well, and like a man. By Alla! I had thought thy race were as soft as women.’
‘No! I can endure yet a good hour,’ said Herbert gaily.
‘’Tis well! then we will push on. Why hast thou burthened thyself with those flowers? fling them away—thou wilt be the lighter.’
‘Not so, my friend; these are the flowers of my own land, and I take them to my comrades; thou dost not know—thou canst not feel how dearly such things are prized in a distant land—bringing with them, as they do, remembrances of past time, and of those who shared it. On with thee! behold I follow.’
Hardly a mile further, on the very summit of the mountain, ere it declined into the plain, they reached a rock, beside which was a tiny footpath, hardly perceptible. ‘This is our resting place for the night,’ said Ahmed; ‘many a time have I slept here, with a load of tobacco on my shoulders for the mountaineers, who are a curious people.’