They went on, the roar of the flames coming nearer and nearer, the hot breath of the fire on their necks, the crash of falling trees sounding so close at hand that they bent forward involuntarily to escape being crushed, the frenzied pack of wild creatures running beside and among the horses, forgetting the lesser fear in the greater. Suddenly in front of them loomed up a bare hillside, steep like a wall. Murtiza Khan gave a shout. “To the left! to the left!” he cried. “We cannot climb up here.” They turned the horses, noticing now that the stream of wild animals had already divided, part going to the left and part to the right. One side of their faces was scorched by the hot air; a sudden leap, as it seemed, of the flames seized a tamarisk standing in their very path. Murtiza Khan caught the ladies’ bridles and dragged the ponies past it, then lashed them on furiously. The fire was running along the ground, licking up the parched grasses. He forced the ponies through it, then pulled them sharply to the right. A barren nullah faced them, with roughly sloping sides, bleak and dry, but it was salvation. On those naked rocks there was no food for the flames. Murtiza Khan was off his horse in a moment, and seizing Lady Haigh’s bridle, led her pony up the steep slope to a bare ledge. His own horse followed him like a dog, and one of the grooms summoned up sufficient presence of mind, under the influence of the trooper’s angry shout, to lead up Penelope’s pony. They spread a horsecloth on the ground, and Lady Haigh and Penelope dropped thankfully out of their saddles. They were trembling from head to foot, their hair and habits singed, but they were safe. On a barren hillside, without food or water, in a desolate region, but safe. For some time they could do nothing but sit helplessly where they were, watching with dull eyes what seemed the persistent efforts of the fire to reach them. Tongues of flame shot out of the burning mass and licked the bare hillside, then sank back thwarted, only to make a further attempt to pursue the fugitives and drive them from their refuge. The fire was no longer inanimate; it was a sentient and malign creature, determined that its prey should not escape. Its efforts ceased at last for lack of fuel, and the castaways on the ledge were able to think of other things. Murtiza Khan began to improvise a sling with a strip torn from his turban, and Lady Haigh, wondering what he could intend to aim at, saw that a little higher up the nullah one of the forest antelopes had taken refuge on a ledge similar to their own. She turned on the trooper angrily-- “What, Murtiza Khan! so lately saved and so soon anxious to destroy? Let the creature escape, as God has allowed us.”