All the Sarhadi Chiefs were now prisoners, but the problem arose as to the best and safest method of transporting them, and all their followers, back to Kacha, fully eighty miles distant. Our own food supplies were already running very short, yet I was obliged to promise the Raiders a fair and equal share of these. We were, therefore, immediately obliged to go on half rations. To add to our troubles the weather was beginning to get very hot on these plains, and I well knew that, at any rate on some days--owing to water difficulties--it would be necessary to make long marches. The first march out of Galugan proved to be heavy uphill work, our route lying up a steady, steep incline. But at night we found a suitable camping ground by the side of a stream. Here again the ground was covered by a mass of beautiful flowers. The following day we descended to the Duzd-ab plain, and had only crossed some five miles of it when a hill of such extraordinary appearance came into view that Landon and I simultaneously exclaimed. This looked for all the world like a huge mushroom with flattened dome and very thick stem--obviously a hill whose upper part was of a harder formation than the lower, thus resisting with better success the attacks of time and weather. Idu cantered up on his pony and pointed to the hill with pride. "That, Sahib," he said, "is called the Takht-i-Jinikan" (throne of the dancing maidens). "Why was it given that name?" I asked. "Do maidens live there alone?" Idu grinned. "Listen, Sahib, and I will tell you the story of the Takht-i-Jinikan. On beautiful moonlight nights immortal maidens are supposed to dance on the flat top of this hill. If a young man is really very good he may climb to the top of the hill alone, while they are dancing, in the hope of obtaining a bride. But he must be very good to be sufficiently worthy to win the love of one of these immortal maidens. If he succeeds she becomes mortal, and they are married." I asked Idu if he had met anyone who had obtained an immortal bride. Idu smiled. "I fear there is no young man in the Sarhad good enough to be worthy of the honour!" I persuaded Landon, who was unmarried, to climb the hill with me--but not by moonlight! On our return Idu asked Major Landon if he had seen the Jinikan. Landon replied regretfully that he had not, but was sure it was because he had not been able to ascend the hill by moonlight--certainly not because he was not good enough. He, however, had seen some very large footprints, which he sincerely trusted, for the sake of the beauty of the legend, did not belong to these immortal damsels! But what pleased me more than the romantic hill was the discovery of a stream only a short distance away. This afforded not only an unexpectedly good supply of water, but, from a quantity of dry bushes along its banks, an abundance of fire wood for cooking.