there was the humming of an
aeroplane.

At noon Simon calculated that they had still twelve or fifteen miles
to cover and that therefore they might be able to reach Dieppe before
night. Dolores, who had dismounted and, like him, was walking,
declared:

"We, yes, we shall get there. But not the horse. He will drop before
that."

"No matter!" said Simon. "The great thing is for us to get there."

The rocky ground was now interspersed with tracts of sand where
footprints were once more visible; and among other trails were those
of two horses coming in their direction along the line of the cable.

"Yet we passed no one on horseback," said Simon. "What do you make of
it?"

She did not reply: but a little later, as they reached the top of a
slope, she showed him a broad river mingling with the horizon and
barring their progress. When they were nearer, they saw that it was
flowing from their right to their left; and, when they were nearer
still, it reminded them of the stream which they had left that
morning. The colour, the banks, the windings were the same. Simon,
disconcerted, examined the country around to discover something that
was different; but the landscape was identical, as a whole and in
every detail.

"What does this mean?" muttered Simon. "There must be an inexplicable
mirage . . . for, after all, it is impossible to admit that we can
have made a mistake."

But proofs of the blunder committed were becoming more numerous. The
track of the two horses having led them away from the cable, they went
down to the river-bank and there, on a flat space bearing the traces
of an encampment, they were compelled to recognize the spot where they
had passed the previous night!

Thus, in a disastrous fit of distraction due to the attack by the
Indians and the death of the younger Mazzani, both of them, in their
excitement, had lost their bearings, and, trusting to the only
indication which they had discovered, had gone back to the submarine
cable. Then, when they resumed their journey, there had been nothing,
no landmark of any kind, to reveal the fact that they were following
the cable in the reverse direction, that they were retracing the path
already travelled and that they were returning, after an exhausting
and fruitless effort, to the spot which they had left some hours ago!

Simon yielded to a momentary fit of despondency. That which was only a
vexatious delay assumed in his eyes the importance of an irrepar