their way back to some happier dwelling place. Then, taking some
provision from their saddle-bags, they placed it on their shoulders,
and casting aside their heavy riding boots they plunged like two
courageous swimmers into the trackless waste.




CHAPTER X.



With no other guide than the sun by day, and by night the host of
stars, the two captains soon lost sight of each other, and all the
sooner, as Fadrique avoided intentionally the object of his aversion.
Heimbert, on the other hand, had no thought but the attainment of his
aim; and, full of joyful confidence in God's assistance, he pursued
his course in a southerly direction.

Many nights and many days had passed, when one evening, as the
twilight was coming on, Heimbert was standing alone in the endless
desert, unable to descry a single object all round on which his eye
could rest. His light flask was empty, and the evening brought with
it, instead or the hoped-for coolness, a suffocating whirlwind of
sand, so that the exhausted wanderer was obliged to press his burning
face to the burning soil in order to escape in some measure the fatal
cloud. Now and then he heard something passing him, or rustling over
him as with the sound of a sweeping mantle, and he would raise
himself in anxious haste; but he only saw what he had already too
often seen in the daylime--the wild beasts of the wilderness roaming