oked my last upon Simba Town, I crossed
the moats and set out homewards through the forest whereof the stripped
boughs also spoke of death, though in the spring these would grow green
again.

Ten days later we started from the Holy Mount, a caravan of about a
hundred camels, of which fifty were laden with the ivory and the rest
ridden by our escort under the command of Harut and our three selves.
But there was an evil fate upon this ivory, as on everything else that
had to do with Jana. Some weeks later in the desert a great sandstorm
overtook us in which we barely escaped with our lives. At the height of
the storm the ivory-laden camels broke loose, flying before it. Probably
they fell and were buried beneath the sand; at any rate of the fifty we
only recovered ten.

Ragnall wished to pay me the value of the remaining loads, which ran
into thousands of pounds, but I would not take the money, saying it
was outside our bargain. Sometimes since then I have thought that I
was foolish, especially when on glancing at that codicil to his will in
after days, the same which he had given me before the battle, I found
that he had set me down for a legacy of L10,000. But in such matters
every man must follow his own instinct.

The White Kendah, an unemotional people especially now when they were
mourning for their lost god and their dead, watched us go without any
demonstration of affection, or even of farewell. Only those priestesses
who had attended upon the person of Lady Ragnall while she played a
divine part among them wept when they parted from her, and uttered
prayers that they might meet her again "in the presence of the Child."

The pass through the great mountains proved hard to climb, as the
foothold for the camels was bad. But we managed it at last, most of the
way on foot, pausing a little while on their crest to look our last for
ever at the land which we had left, where the Mount of the Child was
still dimly visible. Then we descended their farther slope and entered
the northern desert.

Day after day and week after week we travelled across that endless
desert by a way known to Harut on which water could be found, the only
living things in all its vastness, meeting with no accidents save that
of the sandstorm in which the ivory was lost. I was much alone during
that time, since Harut spoke little and Ragnall and his wife were
wrapped up in each other.

At length, months later, we struck a little port on the R