ich had known the meeting of Howesha's teeth.

But when at sunset Jill opened her eyes all sounds and signs of battle
were stilled.

[1]Having four times successfully foaled a she-camel, Taffadaln, the
Glory of the Desert, was ultimately shot on account of her demoniacal
temper.

[2]The devil.

CHAPTER XIX

The sun was sinking when Jill moved, stretched a little, half opened
her eyes, and closing them turned over and went to sleep again for
about two minutes.

Then she half opened her eyes again, stretched out her hand to pull
uncomprehendingly at the white netting round her bed, through which she
could see a blaze of red, gold, and purple; and laughing in the vacant
manner of the delirious, or those but half-awake, tried to collect her
thoughts sufficiently to explain the strangeness of her surroundings,
sitting up with a jerk as the doings of the last twenty-four hours
suddenly stirred in her awakened mind.

Wide-eyed she sat with her hands clasped round her knees, whilst the
deadly stillness seemed to rise as a wall around her, cutting her off
from laughter, love, and life, until wild unreasoning fear, seizing her
very soul, caused her to tear and rend the mosquito nets, and force a
way through them and out of the tent.

For a while she stood holding to the tent rope, looking this way and
that for the sign of some living thing. Before her stretched one vast
plain of gravel, miles upon miles of it receding into nothingness, on
each side the same, behind her tent above, the palm trees waving gently
in the evening breeze, and above again, a sky such as is to be seen
only in this part of the world, for travel you ever so widely, you will
find nothing to rival a desert sunset in its design and colour.

Above her head seemed to be stretched a canopy, made by some Eastern
magic, of a mixture of colours woven by the hands of Love and Hate,
Passion and Revenge, underneath which she stood disheartened,
dishevelled, in crumpled clothes and shoeless feet, with fear-distended
eyes in a fatigue-shadowed face, searching vainly for something alive
and near, be it human, dog, horse or camel.

Owing to a sudden nervous reaction brought about by the cessation of
all physical and mental effort, the girl's power of reasoning had gone,
along with her will, her common sense, and her fearlessness.

That there was another tent beside her own made no more impression on
her mind than the fact that a slight smoke haze sof