the despotism of thirst that was driving him to it now, and he had no tool with which to dig—it would be hopeless work with his hands.

The girl did not move, for in that narrow place and in the dark she could not have helped him. She sat and waited. By and by he would come out, drenched with sweat and yet parching with thirst, and he would glare at her horribly again; perhaps he would be mad when he came out and would kill her because she had brought him there.

After some time she heard a very faint sound overhead, and when she looked up the vulture was gone from his pinnacle. She wondered at this, and her eyes searched every point and crevice of the rock as far as she could see, for she knew that the evil bird could only have been frightened away; and though it fears neither bird nor beast, but only man, she could not believe that any human being could find a foothold near to where it had perched. {29}

{29}

But now she started, and held her breath and steadied herself with one hand on the sand beside her as she leaned back to look up. Something white had flashed in the high sun, far up the precipice, and the sensation the sight left was that of having seen sunshine on a moving white garment.

For some seconds, perhaps for a whole minute, she saw nothing more, though she gazed up steadily, then there was another flash and a small patch of snowy white was moving slowly on the face of the cliff, at some distance above the place where the vulture had been. She bent her brows in the effort to see more by straining her sight, and meanwhile the patch descended faster than it seemed possible that a man could climb down that perilous steep. Yet it was a man, she knew from the first, and soon she saw him plainly, in his loose shirt and white turban. Baraka thought of a big white moth crawling on a flat wall. She was light of foot and sure of hold herself, and could step securely where few living things could move at all without instant danger, but she held her breath as she watched the climber's descent towards her. She saw him plainly now, a brown-legged, brown-armed man in a white shirt and a fur cap, and he had a long gun slung across his back. Nearer still, and he was down to the jutting pinnacle where the vulture had sat, and she saw his black beard; still nearer by a few feet and she knew him, and then her glance darted to the mouth of the cave, at the other end of which the man she loved was toiling desperately alone in the dark to pierce the dam {30} of earth and stones. It was only a glance, in a second of time, 

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