Night had fallen. The moon had arisen. The stars shone lustrously. The sky burned a deep rich blue. And all this unreal beauty that had mocked him was only the sculptured world of sand translating the magnificence and splendor of the heavens.
More than all else, Adam grew sensitive to the oppressiveness of the silence. His first steps were painful, a staggering, halting gait, that exercise at length worked into some semblance of his old stride. The cold desert air invigorated him, and if it had not been for the discomfort of thirst he would have been doing well under the circumstances.
A sense of direction that had nothing to do with his intelligence prompted him to face east. He obeyed it. And he walked for what seemed hours over a moon-blanched sea of sand, to climb at last a high dune from which he saw the dark, level floor of the desert, and far across the shadowy space a black range of mountains. He thought he recognized the rugged contour, and when, sweeping his gaze southward, he saw the lone mountain looming like a dark sentinel over the desert gateway, then he was sure of his direction. Over there to the east lay the river. And he had long hours of the cool night to travel.
From this vantage point Adam looked back over the silver sea of sand dunes; and such was the sight of it that even in his precarious condition he was stirred to his depths. The huge oblong silver moon hung low over that vast heaving stretch of desert. It was a wasteland, shimmering with its belts and plains of moonlit sand, blank and mysterious in its shadows, an abode of loneliness. An inexplicable sadness pervaded Adam’s soul. This wasteland and he seemed identical. How strange to feel that he did not want to leave it! Life could not be sustained in this sepulcher of the desert. But it was not life that his soul yearned for then—only peace. And peace dwelt there in that solitude of the sands.
* * * * *
Gray dawn found Adam many miles closer to the mountain range. Yet it was still far and his former dread returned. On every side what interminable distances!
A deepening rose color over the eastern horizon appeared to be reflected upon the mountain peaks, and this glow crept down the dark slopes. Gray dawn changed to radiant morning with an ethereal softness of color. When the blazing disk of the sun shone over the ramparts of the east all that desert world underwent a wondrous transfiguration. The lord of day had arisen and this was his empire. Red was the hue of his authority, emblazoned in long vivid rays over the ranges and the wastelands. Then the great orb of fire cleared the horizon and the desert seemed aflame.
One moment Adam gave to the marvel and glory of the sunrise, and then he looked no more. That brief moment ended in a consciousness of the gravity of his flight. For the first touch of sun on face and hands burned hot, as if it suddenly aggravated a former burn that the night had soothed.
“Got to reach—river soon,” he muttered, thickly, “or never will.”
He walked on while the sun climbed.