“Have you been here long, Desmond?” she asked.
“Very long, dearest. Are you rested?”
“Quite. From here you can see all the people travelling away from the city towards the sea?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been watching them?”
“Yes, indeed; for half the afternoon.”
She turned her great eyes on him searchingly, and seemed as if she checked a question which was almost on her lips.
“They must have been a strange multitude,” she said at length. “I wonder where they are all going?”
“Some to the villages in the plain, some to the coast. I saw the Riffs who were in the Soko pass by. I suppose they were returning to the caverns from which they plunder becalmed vessels, Spanish and Portuguese.”