TO THE HUNTING GROUNDS 109 



climbed a tree and found peace in the high branches. 

 He called the annoying httle pests ephemerids, and 

 told us that ephemeral insects are born in the afternoon 

 and so never see the morning sun, because they all die 

 before midnight. This particular brand upset all his 

 theories. No tiny carcasses strewed the grass at 

 breakfast time. The afternoon-bom ones were veterans, 

 and tossed in ascending clouds in the shafts of sunlight 

 slanting through the trees. 



My air pillow was a perfect joy to Ali Ghirik, who 

 blew it up and deflated it enthusiastically. He took 

 the wonderful toy to a little distance that he might have 

 it all to himself, and sat cross-legged on a fallen tree. 

 Sometimes he allowed the cushion to exhaust itself 

 slowly and quietly, but more often he clapped vigorous 

 hands against its bulging sides and pressed out the air 

 in a little protesting scream. 



Softly the night crept up the steeps, embracing in 

 his soft grey wings the world of green. The stars, in 

 triumphant legion, dotted the heavens, marguerites in 

 a sea of blue. My cork mattress protected me from 

 the damp, my bourka was coverlet and tent ; wrapped 

 in its ample folds, with the braided grasses murmuring 

 a gentle lullaby in my ears, I ought to have slept the 

 sleep of the just, but the eerie feeling of unfathomed 

 spaces in the wood, the fretted silhouette of dark 

 trees against which the shrivelled leaves fell gently to 

 earth like broken-winged birds, and the delicately 

 woven shadows, looming ghostly and weird, kept my 

 senses alert. Lurking abreks — the local banditti — 

 had no terrors for us, for, though we were told in Telav 



