It had a low building in one corner.

'These are vines,' said Cyril superiorly, 'and I know this is a
vineyard. I shouldn't wonder if there was a wine-press inside that place
over there.'

At last they got out of the orchards and on to a sort of road, very
rough, and not at all like the roads you are used to. It had cypress
trees and acacia trees along it, and a sort of hedge of tamarisks,
like those you see on the road between Nice and Cannes, or near
Littlehampton, if you've only been as far as that.

And now in front of them they could see a great mass of buildings.
There were scattered houses of wood and stone here and there among green
orchards, and beyond these a great wall that shone red in the early
morning sun. The wall was enormously high--more than half the height of
St Paul's--and in the wall were set enormous gates that shone like gold
as the rising sun beat on them. Each gate had a solid square tower on
each side of it that stood out from the wall and rose above it. Beyond
the wall were more towers and houses, gleaming with gold and bright
colours. Away to the left ran the steel-blue swirl of a great river.
And the children could see, through a gap in the trees, that the river
flowed out from the town under a great arch in the wall.

'Those feathery things along by the water are palms,' said Cyril
instructively.

'Oh, yes; you know everything,' Robert replied. 'What's all that
grey-green stuff you see away over there, where it's all flat and
sandy?'

'All right,' said Cyril loftily, '_I_ don't want to tell you anything. I
only thought you'd like to know a palm-tree when you saw it again.'

'Look!' cried Anthea; 'they're opening the gates.'

And indeed the great gates swung back with a brazen clang, and instantly
a little crowd of a dozen or more people came out and along the road
towards them.

The children, with one accord, crouched behind the tamarisk hedge.

'I don't like the sound of those gates,' said Jane. 'Fancy being inside
when they shut. You'd never get out.'

'You've got an arch of your own to go out by,' the Psammead put its head
out of the basket to remind her. 'Don't behave so like a girl. If I were
you I should just march right into the town and ask to see the king.'

There was something at once simple and grand about this idea, and it
pleased everyone.

So when the work-people had passed (they WERE work-people, the children
felt sure, because they were dressed so plainly--j