Had we not all three been fleet of foot
and long of wind, we could not have persisted in the continuous, rapid
journey over the roughest of ground, with the heather often well-nigh up
to our waists.
For my own part, I have no idea now, looking back, what goal it was
which I expected to reach at the end of our pursuit. I can remember
that my mind was full of the vaguest and most varying speculations.
Could it be that the three Buddhists had had a craft in readiness off
the coast, and had embarked with their prisoners for the East?
The direction of their track seemed at first to favour this supposition,
for it lay in the line of the upper end of the bay, but it ended by
branching off and striking directly inland. Clearly the ocean was not
to be our terminus.
By ten o'clock we had walked close upon twelve miles, and were compelled
to call a halt for a few minutes to recover our breath, for the last
mile or two we had been breasting the long, wearying slope of the
Wigtown hills.
From the summit of this range, which is nowhere more than a thousand
feet in height, we could see, looking northward, such a scene of
bleakness and desolation as can hardly be matched in any country.
Right away to the horizon stretched the broad expanse of mud and of
water, mingled and mixed together in the wildest chaos, like a portion
of some world in the process of formation. Here and there on the
dun-coloured surface of this great marsh there had burst out patches of
sickly yellow reeds and of livid, greenish scum, which only served to
heighten and intensify the gloomy effect of the dull, melancholy
expanse.
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