“O, such a blessed night as this,
I often think if friends were near,
How we should feel, and gaze with bliss
Upon the moonlight scenery here.”
He strolled into the royal ruin, stumbling over broken carvings, and into hollows concealed by luminous plants, beneath whose shades dwelt noisome things that wriggled away in the marvelous white light. Climbing through what was once a door, he stepped out on a ledge of masonry, that hung sheer seven hundred feet over the plain. Reuel got out his pipe and it was soon in full blast, while the smoker set to building castles in the curls of blue smoke, that floated lightly into space. Jim with the guns waited for him at the foot of the hill.
Under the influence of the soothing narcotic and the spell of the silver moon, Reuel dreamed of fame and fortune he would carry home to lay at a little woman’s feet. Presently his castle-building was interrupted by a low wail—not exactly the mew of a cat, nor yet the sound of a lute.
Again the sound.
What could it be?
“Ah, I have it!” muttered Reuel; “it’s the Arabs singing in the camp.”
Little did he imagine that within ten paces of him crouched an enormous leopard.
Little did he imagine that he was creeping, creeping toward him, as a cat squirms at a bird.
He sat on the ruined ledge of the parapet, within two feet of the edge; seven hundred feet below the desert sand glittered like molten silver in the gorgeous moonlight.
He was unarmed, having given Jim his revolver to hold.