good that they continued their slow
progress, the baggage-horses ruling the rate at which they were able to
proceed; and for the next hour they went on ascending and zigzagging
alone; the rugged mountain track, with defile and gorge and ridge of
rock rising fold upon fold, making their path increase in grandeur at
every turn, till they were in one of nature's wildest fastnesses, and
with the air perceptibly brisker and more keen.

All at once, just as they had turned into the entrance to one of the
most savage-looking denies they had yet seen, Yussuf pointed to a
distant pile of rock and said sharply:

"Look, there is an animal you may journey for days without seeing. Take
the glass, effendi Lawrence, and say what it is."

The lad checked his pony, adjusted his glass, an example followed by the
professor, while Mr Burne indulged himself with a pinch of snuff.

"A goat," cried Lawrence, as he got the animal into the field of the
glass, and saw it standing erect upon the summit of the rock, and gazing
away from them--"A goat! And what fine horns?"

"An ibex, Lawrence, my boy. Goat-like if you like. Ah, there he goes.
How easily they take alarm."

For the animal made a bound and seemed to plunge from rock to rock down
into a rift, and then up an almost perpendicular wall on the opposite
side higher and higher until it disappeared.

"It is no wonder, excellency," said Yussuf as they rode on along the
narrow path, "when every hand is against them, and they have been taught
that they are not safe from bullets half a mile away, and--Why is Hamed
stopping?"

They had been halting to gaze at the ibex, and all such pauses in their
journey were utilised for letting Hamed get well on ahead with his slow
charge. Experience had taught them that to leave him behind with the
necessaries of life was often to miss them altogether till the next
morning.

In this case he had got several hundred yards in advance, but had
suddenly stopped short, just at the point of a sharp elbow in the track,
where they could see him with the two horses standing stock-still, and
staring straight before him.

"Let's get on and see," said the professor, and they pressed on to come
upon a spot where the track forked directly after, a narrower path
leading up a rift in the mountains away to their left, and the sight of
this satisfied Yussuf.

"Hamed thinks he may be doing wrong," he said, "and that perhaps he
ought to have turned down here.