In the front, however, the sand still
stretched open to the wells, where three great Gemeiza trees of dark and
spreading foliage stood spaced like sentinels.
In the shadow to the right front of the fort, where the bushes fringed
the open sand with the level regularity of a river bank, the soldiers
unsaddled their camels and prepared their food. Durrance and Captain
Mather walked round the fort, and as they came to the southern corner,
Durrance stopped.
"Hallo!" said he.
"Some Arab has camped here," said Mather, stopping in his turn. The grey
ashes of a wood fire lay in a little heap upon a blackened stone.
"And lately," said Durrance.
Mather walked on, mounted a few rough steps to the crumbled archway of
the entrance, and passed into the unroofed corridors and rooms. Durrance
turned the ashes over with his boot. The stump of a charred and whitened
twig glowed red. Durrance set his foot upon it, and a tiny thread of
smoke spurted into the air.
"Very lately," he said to himself, and he followed Mather into the
fort. In the corners of the mud walls, in any fissure, in the very
floor, young trees were sprouting. Rearward a steep glacis and a deep
fosse defended the works.
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