and fairly good. They rode their horses alternating between a fast walk and a short hand gallop.
Thorneycroft had not eaten since noon of the preceding day, and was tired and hungry. But he kept on. For there was something calling him, calling him, from the ragged hills that looped to the east in carved, sinister immensity; and through the velvety gloom of the night, through the gaunt shadows of the low, volcanic ridges that trooped back to Deolibad and danced like hobgoblins among the dwarf aloes, through the click-clanketty-click of the stallions' pattering feet, there came to him again the whirring—like a tragic message to hurry, hurry.
Morning blazed with the suddenness of the tropics. The sun had hardly risen, but already it was close and muggy. A jaundiced heat veiled the levels—foretaste of the killing, scorching heat of March and April—and the birds, true weather prophets, the parrots and the minas, the tiny, blue-winged doves and the pert, ubiquitous crows, were opening their beaks with a painful effort and gasping for air—another week, and they would be off for the cool deodars of the higher hills.
In the distance a dark mass was looming up:
