This terrible lesson was heeded by everyone, and for fully half an hour the silence was almost complete, save for the gasps and hard breathing of our followers as they toiled onward down the steep face of the gigantic rock.
Someone cried out that here, as across the quicksands, there were a thousand steps. If this were true, as I believe it was, then the average distance between the ledges being about five feet, the height of the rock was somewhere about five thousand feet. When progress at last became easier, I tried to attract Omar's attention, and inquire whether we should have to scale the rock opposite, but I could not project my voice far enough below to reach him. When he shouted I could hear, as his voice ascended, but he apparently could not distinguish what I said in reply.
Kona, his bow and empty quiver slung behind him, scrambled down after me ever nimble as a cat. His black skin shone like ebony, but here and there were cuts from which blood freely flowed, showing that he too, although inured to a savage life, had not altogether escaped in this struggle to enter the land unknown.
As we approached the base the ledges became more frequent, and hastening in my downward climb I at last experienced gratification at finding the peril past, and myself standing at the foot of the great precipice.
"Well?" asked Omar, approaching me quickly. "How did you fare?"
"Badly," I answered with a smile. "A dozen times I gave myself up for lost."
"Care and courage may accomplish everything," he said, laughing. "Few, however, would care to risk the perils of the Thousand Steps without a guide, or even if they did, and succeeded in accomplishing the journey to this point, they could not enter our land."
"Why?"
He turned towards the flat, bare face of overhanging rock opposite, and gazing up to its towering summit, answered:
"Because our land lies yonder. We must, after resting, ascend."
