She laughed. “My brother teased me about being afraid of the dark, so I told him I was much braver than he was, and that I would go down into the caves. We have a house quite close to them. And I said that he wouldn’t dare to come. So, of course, he came. There were long, long dark passages, but we had a lantern, and we didn’t see or hear anything at all. At the end we came out into a big open cave with pillars carved in it, and some smaller caves on each side. All had openings looking down on that big arch. Afterwards we brought my father there, but none of the other people come, for they are rather afraid of spirits, and the caves don’t take you anywhere.” When we got to the far end where the hog-back terminated above the desert, we found that, as we had thought, the sheer part was nothing like so high as nearer to the main cliff. Also it was not so smooth. There were lines of jagged broken strata and projecting folds of rock and crevices, and Forsyth considered it was easily climbable. “Well, now, the thing is to camp by that water. There is a little grazing for the camels, the same kind as you find at the other side of the desert, so they can’t take any harm from it. It will be something green for them to chew,” said I. “Yes,” answered Wrexham, “and then, directly we’ve had a mouthful of food, Alec and I, with Payindah, will come over here again and reconnoitre the way up. You say Payindah climbs fairly well. Firoz is rather heavy-footed on a hill. You and Aryenis can stop in camp and see things fixed up. A restful afternoon won’t do either of you any harm, especially with that face of yours.” My wound was healing up cleanly, much to Forsyth’s and still more to my own satisfaction; but it was inclined to be painful, especially at night, and a quiet afternoon would be by no means unwelcome, more particularly as there would be Aryenis to keep me company. It’s funny how circumstances alter things. I suppose it was the unusual surroundings which had thrown us together so much during the last four days, but I couldn’t help feeling that I had known her for years and years--in fact, absurd as it sounds, I really at the moment couldn’t picture any kind of existence in which she would be absent. Probably the wide loneliness of the desert had much to do with it. About midday the reconnoitring party set off. Aryenis and I walked out far enough from the pool where we had camped to be able to see the arch. While the others were making their way across the sand to the end of the hill, Aryenis turned to me and reminded me that I had not yet told how we had found our way to the hills across the desert. So I gave her an outline of the story of old John Wrexham’s journey, and the things he had written in his diary. Then I went on to tell her how Wrexham had come up in 1919 to prospect, and of the man he had found.