He heard O'Shea and the cart
a good way further on, and fancied he saw them moving. The boy, at
least, just kept within his sight; and so he followed down into a
hollow, where he felt crisp, low-growing herbage beneath his feet, and
by looking up at the stars he could observe that its sandy walls rose
all around him like a cup. On the side farthest from the sea the walls
of the hollow rose so high that in the darkness they looked like a
mountainous region.
They had gone down out of the reach of the gale; and although light airs
still blew about them, here the lull was so great that it seemed like
going out of winter into a softer clime.
When Caius came up with the cart he found that the traces had already
been unfastened and the pony set loose to graze.
"Is there anything for him to eat?" asked Caius curiously, glad also to
establish some friendly interchange of thought.
"One doesn't travel on these sands," said O'Shea, "with a horse that
can't feed itself on the things that grow in the sand. It's the first
necessary quality for a horse in these parts."
"What sort of things grow here?" asked Caius, pawing the ground with his
foot.
He could not quite get over the inward impression that the
mountainous-looking region of the dune over against them was towered
with infernal palaces, so weird was the place.
O'Shea's voice came out of the darkness; his form was hardly to be seen.
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