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The air was thick and hot, and objects only a score of yards away were but just visible. The runnel at the tent-door had barely a voice of its own. Paul guessed rightly that its course lay through a tract of forest fire, and that the greater part of its volume had evaporated in the heat. The river in the gorge plunged and thundered.
In the glare from the tent-door he gleamed darkly, a wild thing of black flames, and those in the front row of the crowd trod nervously on the toes of those behind, edging out of reach of his restless, dancing hoofs. For it seemed impossible that the woman in the saddle should be really his master. And yet she sat upright and unconcerned.
This criticism of the "Gate of Paradise" sounds even to the writer of it profane, and demands a palinode. Who, indeed, can affirm that he would wish the floating figure of Eve, or the three angels at Abraham's tent-door, other than they are? The patera is at South Kensington, the frieze at Florence. As also the wooden Baptist in the Frari at Venice.
When he was a boy a travelling show visited his native town, and though he was not permitted to go within the mystic and alluring tent, he stood longingly at the gate, and was prodigiously diverted and astonished by an exhibition of tight-rope walking, which was given outside the tent-door as a bait to lure pleasure-loving and frivolous townspeople within, and also as a tantalization to the children of the saints who were not allowed to enter the tent of the wicked.
She broke into sudden laughter as she considered them, and after a moment went to the tent-door and shyly looked up the river. The figure of her rescuer was still receding at a rapid rate. She nodded to herself, and then dropping the flap of the tent, faced the problem of the unaccustomed garments.
The noise came seething up from the tents barrel-organs each grinding out a different tune, criers, the bands of the various dancing-booths, and the measured tread of a schottische or polka. The women wandered up and down in clusters, casting long looks into the refreshment-tents where their men were sitting; and some of them stopped at the tent-door and made coaxing signs to some one inside.
He came to the men's tent, where, in a row, with their faces towards the tent door, the camels were lying, eating barley that had been spread out for them on bits of sacking. When he reached it he stood still. He was shrouded in a black abâyeh. "Hamza!" Mrs. Armine had called to him softly from the tent-door. "Hamza!" He flitted across the open space that divided the tents, and stood beside her.
One incident, of which I was a witness, might be taken to indicate that at least he had something very heavy on his conscience. One evening Wolff and I were watching the approach of a very violent thunderstorm. Just as it broke, and while we were in the act of fastening the tent-door, Mulcahy appeared and, to my surprise, asked if he might come in.
Kyley's tent, for the Kyleys had shifted their prosperous business to the vicinity of Bakery Hill a month before. At the tent-door she was met by Mary. 'He is not amongst the dead, thank God! said Aurora, 'and he's not with the prisoners. Jim is safe, but poor Mike Burton 'Wounded, is he? 'Dead. Shot through the head. Mrs. Kyley threw up her hands. 'My God! she said. 'The poor lad!
He wanted a word with her when Ballantyne was out of the way and she was not upon her guard to fence him off. The pipe might be his friend and give it him. He went up to Stella at the tent-door and Ballantyne, who was half-way between the camp-fire and the tent, stopped when he caught sight of him. "That's right," he said. "You ought to be going;" and he turned again towards the camel.
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