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Guapo marched off with his axe to get some firewood, and Leon accompanied him to assist in carrying it. They had not far to go only a hundred yards or so, for up at the end of the promontory the forest began, and there were both large trees and underwood. As they walked forward one species of trees caught their attention. They were palm-trees, but of a sort they had not yet met with.
The prophet Isaiah says, according to our reading, 'the parched land shall become a pool. The word which he uses is that almost technical one which describes the phenomenon known only in Eastern lands, or at least known in them only in its superlative degree; the mirage, where the dancing currents of ascending air simulate the likeness of a cool lake, with palm-trees around it.
In the charm and wonder of his walk in this enchanted land he was able for a moment to forget his hunger for gold and to admire the great branching palm-trees, and the fish that "are here so different from ours that it is wonderful.
A bound like that the soul gives when you sit in the Ramesseum, and see the crowding sunbeams, the far-off groves of palm-trees, and the drowsy mountains, like shadows, that sleep beyond the Nile. And you look up, perhaps, as I looked that morning, and upon a lotus column near you, relieved, you perceive the figure of a young man singing. A young man singing!
The deserted streets lengthened; the palm-trees that topped the walls here and there were motionless; the brimming cisterns seemed like silver bucklers lost in the courts; the beacon on the promontory of Hermaeum was beginning to grow pale.
The sternness vanished from it, and was replaced by an ardent expression that made it look almost like the face of a romantic boy. "It's it's the Egyptian Pan by the water," he whispered. His arm stole round her waist. "Come a little nearer gently. That's it! Now listen!" The little, clear, frail sound was repeated again and again. The young moon went down behind the palm-trees.
Eternal summer basked round this enchanted yacht of his fancy summer sought now in Scottish firths or Norwegian fiords, now in quaint old Southern harbors, ablaze with the hues of strange costumes and half-tropical flowers and fruits, now in far-away Oriental bays and lagoons, or among the coral reefs and palm-trees of the luxurious Pacific.
At the same time three battalions of infantry were moved along the river until opposite the Arab position. At 9 A.M. the eighteen guns on the island opened a tremendous bombardment at 1,200 yards range on the entrenchments, and at the same time the infantry and a rocket detachment concentrated their fire on the tops of the palm-trees.
They were to wait beyond the palm-trees, whose green foliage appeared on the hilly ground at the edge of some springs near the shore; the others were to be led farther into the country to begin, at a given signal, the journey toward the southeast into the mountains, through whose inhospitable stony fastnesses a regular army and the war-chariots could advance only with the utmost difficulty.
In a hole near the top of one of the palm-trees, Lucien spied out a parrot's nest, and had taken possession of two young birds, red, green, and yellow in color, which seemed to adapt themselves wonderfully to the attentions lavished upon them by the boy. "What are you going to do with these poor orphans?" I asked. "I am going to take them home to my brother and sister.
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