other brethren trembled and returned, leaving Hiouen-thsang alone. Yet India was still more than a thousand miles distant, by the way of the caravans.
Only the men of the last watch-tower would not allow Hiouen-thsang to pass; but he escaped by them into the desert. Then he followed the line of the caravan, the prints of the feet of camels and horses leading toward India. Skeletons were whitening in the sands; the eyeless sockets of innumerable skulls looked at him. The sun set and rose again many times; the sand-sea moved its waves continually with a rusting sound; the multitude of white bones waxed vaster. And as Hiouen-thsang proceeded phantom cities mocked him on the right hand and upon the left, and the spectral caravans wrought by the mirage rode by him shadowlessly. Then his water-skin burst, and the desert drank up its contents; the hoof-prints disappeared. Hiouen-thsang had lost his way. . . .
*
* *
From the past of twelve hundred years ago, we can hear the breaking of that water-skin;
