n blue-black waves, while those nearer to shore are of quite a
different hue, and meet their sisters that lie nearer to the horizon in a
dull greenish-grey, as dusty plains join darker lava beds. The
northeasterly wind, which had risen as the sun rose, now blew more
keenly, wreaths of white foam rode on the crests of the waves, though
these did not beat wildly and stormily on the mountain-foot, but rolled
heavily to the shore in humped ridges, endlessly long, as if they were of
molten lead. Still the clear bright spray splashed up when the gulls
dipped their pinions in the water as they floated above it, hither and
thither, restless and uttering shrill little cries, as though driven by
terror.

Three men were walking slowly along the causeway which led from the top
of the hill down into the valley, but it was only the eldest, who walked
in front of the other two, who gave any heed to the sky, the sea, the
gulls, and the barren plain that lay silent at his feet. He stopped, and
as soon as he did so, the others followed his example. The landscape
below him seemed to rivet his gaze, and it justified the disapproval with
which he gently shook his head, which was somewhat sunk into his beard. A
narrow strip of desert stretched westward before him as far as the eye
could reach, dividing two levels of water. Along this natural dyke a
caravan was passing, and the elastic feet of the camels fell noiselessly
on the road they trod. The leader, wrapped in his white mantle, seemed
asleep, and the camel-drivers to be dreaming; the dull-colored eagles by
the road-side did not stir at their approach. To the right of the stretch
of flat coast along which the road ran from Syria to Egypt, lay the
gloomy sea, overhung by grey clouds; to the left lay the desert, a
strange and mysterious feature in the landscape, of which the eye could
not see the end, either to the east or to the west, and which looked here
like a stretch of snow, there like standing water, and again like a
thicket of rushes.

The eldest of our travellers gazed constantly towards heaven or into the
distance; the second, a slave who carried rugs and cloaks on his broad
shoulders, never took his eyes off his master; and the third, a young,
free-man, looked wearily and dreamily down the road.

A broad path, leading to a stately temple, crossed that which led from
the summit of the mountain to the coast, and the bearded pedestrian
turned up it; but he followed it only for a