They trod daintily, like little ladies, along a circling track that goats made and men had certainly done nothing to improve.

We made an almost complete ellipse around and down, and rode at last over dry dung at the bottom, into which the donkeys' feet sank as into a three-pile carpet.

You could see the stars overhead, but nothing, where we were, except that window and a shaft of yellow light with hundreds of moths dazzled in it.
We must have made some noise in spite of the donkeys' vetvet foot-fall.

As we crossed the shaft of light a door opened within six feet of the window.

A man in Arab deshabille with a red tarboosh awry, thrust out his head and drew it in again quickly.
"Is that the American ?" he asked.