Once or twice he grew sick and giddy, and lost for a moment all
consciousness; but he pressed onward, resolute not to yield and leave
the vultures, hovering aloft, their prey. He was still somewhat weakened
by the wounds of Zaraila; he had been bruised and exhausted by the
skirmish of the past night; he was weary and heart-broken; but he did
not yield to his longing to sink down on the sands, and let his life
ebb out; he held patiently onward through the infinite misery of
the passage. At last he drew near the caravanserai where he had been
directed to obtain a change of horses. It stood midway in the distance
that he had to traverse, and almost alone when the face of the country
changed, and was more full of color, and more broken into rocky and
irregular surfaces.
As a man walks in a dream, he led the sinking beast toward its shelter,
as its irregular corner towers became dimly perceptible to him through
the dizzy mists that had obscured his sight. By sheer instinct he found
his route straight toward the open arch of its entrance-way, and into
the square courtyard thronged with mules and camels and horses; for the
caravanserai stood on the only road that led through that district to
the south, and was the only house of call for drovers, or shelter for
travelers and artists of Europe who might pass that way. The groups in
the court paused in their converse and in their occupations, and looked
in awe at the gray charger with its strange burden, and the French
Chasseur who came so blindly forward like a man feeling his passage
through the dark.
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