swork, unless he was
prepared to slow down or even to alight. He had reckoned that, even
with the slight assistance of the wind, he could hardly hope to reach
the head of the Persian Gulf before six o'clock, which would be past
nine by the sun; but he thought he might reasonably expect to reach
the Euphrates before sunset; and since the map assured him that that
river ran a fairly direct course to the Gulf, he might follow it
without much difficulty if the night proved clear, and so assure
himself that he was not going astray.

The country over which he was now flying was hilly, and he kept at a
fairly high altitude. The map showed him that the great Taurus range
lay between him and the eastern extremity of the Mediterranean. Within
an hour and a half after leaving Constantinople he came in sight of
its huge bleak masses stretching away to right and left, but still a
hundred miles or more distant, although, on the right, spurs of the
Cilician part of the range jutted out much nearer to him. On the
right, too, he descried from his great height a broad and glittering
expanse of water, which the map named Lake Beishehr. Making for the
gap in the mountains near the Cilician coast he found himself passing
over a comparatively low country, and soon afterwards descried the
blue waters of the Mediterranean and the island of Cyprus rising out
of it a hundred miles away.

Setting now a more easterly course, he passed over an ironbound coast,
its perpendicular cliffs fringed with dwarf pines; and then over a
large town which could be none other than Antioch. Half-an-hour more
brought him within sight of another city, doubtless Aleppo. He still
steered almost due east, though a point or two southward would be more
direct, because he wished to avoid the Syrian desert; a breakdown in
such a barren tract of country would mean a fatal delay. Soon
afterwards he reached a broad full river, flowing rapidly between
verdant banks.

"The Euphrates," he shouted to Rodier.

"Ah! I wish we had time for a swim," replied the man.

For some time Smith followed the general course of the river, avoiding
the windings. Severely practical as he was, he could not pass through
this seat of ancient civilizations without letting his mind run back
over centuries of time, recalling the names of Sennacherib, Cyrus and
Alexander; and how Cyrus had not shrunk from drying up the bed of
this very river in his operations against Babylon. On the ground over