Back of her the woman cried out:

"On! On! It is the pestilence!"

Momus wielded his goad. Laodice, shaking and crying aloud, looked back
to see the strange woman swerve her camel past the dark shape lying
with out-flung arms in the road and sweep quickly on after them.

The scourge had overtaken Aquila.

All night the camels fled east, all night the soft footfall of the
woman's beast pursued them; all night the wind freshened until
Laodice's bared face stiffened with the cold and the breath of the
mute that sat upon her camel's neck steamed in the moonlight. Up and
up, by steep and winding wadies they mounted; under overhanging cliffs
and past bald towers of hill-rock staring white in the moon, along
black passes between brooding eminences of solid night, crowned with
ghost-light; over high plateaus darkened with groves, down dales with
singing, invisible streams running seaward and up again and on until
the hills engulfed them wholly and those before were higher than any
they had seen. Then their flying beasts, leaving the Roman road over
which they had sped for some distance, followed a sheep-path and burst
into an open immersed in moonlight. Below in the distance was a
cluster of huts, white and lifeless. But abroad, over the crisp grass
and misty white on all the exposed slopes, sparkled the deep hoar
frost!