And I--I was what I have always been--ugly and hirsute, iron-grey now
also, but in spite of my sixty odd years, still wonderfully strong, for
my strength seemed to increase with time, and my health was perfect. In
fact, during all this period of rough travels, although now and again
we had met with accidents which laid us up for awhile, neither of us
had known a day of sickness. Hardship seemed to have turned our
constitutions to iron and made them impervious to every human ailment.
Or was this because we alone amongst living men had once inhaled the
breath of the Essence of Life?
Our fears relieved--for notwithstanding our foodless night, as yet
neither of us showed any signs of exhaustion--we turned to contemplate
the landscape. At our feet beyond a little belt of fertile soil, began
a great desert of the sort with which we were familiar--sandy,
salt-encrusted, treeless, waterless, and here and there streaked with
the first snows of winter. Beyond it, eighty or a hundred miles away--in
that lucent atmosphere it was impossible to say how far exactly--rose
more mountains, a veritable sea of them, of which the white peaks soared
upwards by scores.
As the golden rays of the rising sun touched their snows to splendour,
I saw Leo's eyes become troubled. Swiftly he turned and looked along the
edge of the desert.
"See there!" he said, pointing to something dim and enormous.
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