A SOLEMN DANCE 87 



Did the unanealed spirits of those long-dead 

 creatures still people that haunted solitude 

 which made day more terrifying than mid- 

 night? Were the landscapes of the mirage 

 simulacra of those bounding an inland sea in 

 which the dragon and the kraken lived and 

 multiplied? Was the thrilling fear, which read 

 menace in my own shadow, akin to that " terror 

 of noon ' which gripped the heart-strings of 

 the shepherd of Mount-Ida, — when he knew 

 by the rustling of the brake that Pan was near? 



I hastened away — back to where the desert 

 wore a friendlier face, — to where old Prince 

 was executing a kind of solemn dance before 

 the " taaibosch " to which he was tethered, — 

 lifting his feet constantly, one at a time, in a 

 vain attempt to cool them. He welcomed me 

 with a whinny of relief. Perhaps the spirits 

 of the Kanya had been filling him, too, with 

 indefinable dread. So the saddle was re- 

 placed, and I resumed my pilgrimage on foot, 

 the old horse pacing stolidly after me. 



We trended southward, for I wanted to get 

 away from the Kanya; I began to hate it — 

 almost as I hated Typhon. Yet I should not 

 have hated either, for if it had not been for 

 these two, the oryx, one of the desert's noblest 

 denizens, — the aristocrat of its depleted 



