Here we stayed until following the loop, they came
to the patch of bush and passed behind it. Then we ran forward again as
far as we could go. Glancing backwards as we went, I saw our two poor,
foundered beasts plunging away across the plain, happily almost in the
same line along which we had ridden from the rise. They were utterly
done, but freed from our weights and urged on by fear, could still
gallop and keep ahead of the dogs, though we knew that this would not
be for very long. I saw also that the Khan, guessing what we had done
in our despair, was trying to call his hounds off the horses, but as
yet without avail, for they would not leave the quarry which they had
viewed.
All this came to my sight in a flash, but I remember the picture well.
The mighty, snow-clad Peak surmounted by its column of glowing smoke and
casting its shadow for mile upon mile across the desert flats; the plain
with its isolated rocks and grey bushes; the doomed horses struggling
across it with convulsive bounds; the trailing line of great dogs that
loped after them, and amongst these, looking small and lonely in that
vast place, the figure of the Khan and his horse, of which the black
hide was beflecked with foam. Then above, the blue and tender sky,
where the round moon shone so clearly that in her quiet, level light no
detail, even the smallest, could escape the eye.
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