"They've left their card here once, and they may again," said Belmont, and they all tried to smile.
And now they came upon one of the most satisfying sights on which the human eye can ever rest.

Here and there, in the depressions at either side of the road, there had been a thin scurf of green, which meant that water was not very far from the surface.

And then, quite suddenly, the track dipped down into a bowl-shaped hollow, with a most dainty group of palm-trees, and a lovely green sward at the bottom of it.

The sun gleaming upon that brilliant patch of clear, restful colour, with the dark glow of the bare desert around it, made it shine like the purest emerald in a setting of burnished copper.

And then it was not its beauty only, but its promise for the future: water, shade, all that weary travellers could ask for.