southward in the desert and guiding his course by the stars would,
according to tradition, arrive at length at a wonderfully fertile oasis,
the abode of a divinely beautiful enchantress, yet everything appeared
highly uncertain and dispiriting, and was rendered still more so by the
avalanches of dust before the travellers' view.

The youths looked sadly at the prospect before them, and their horses
snorted and started back at the horrible plain, as though it were some
insidious quicksand, and even the riders themselves were seized with
doubt and dismay. Suddenly they sprung from their saddles, as at some
word of command, unbridled their horses, loosened their girths, and
turned them loose on the desert, that they might find 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 daytime--the wild
beasts of the wilderness roaming at liberty through the desert
waste. Sometimes it was an ugly camel, then it was a long-necked and
disproportioned giraffe, and then again a long-legged ostrich hastening
away with its wings outspread. They all appeared to scorn him, and he
had already taken his resolve to open his eyes no more, and to give
himself up to his fate, witho