He crept and felt in the dark for a few, scattered dates that he had before noticed lying near the roof's edge, the fruit having fallen from a date palm and having lain there till nearly as dry as shards.

But there was still nutriment left in the dates, and, having eaten nothing since morning, he gnawed the fruit.
He could not descend by the date palm's trunk, for that was too far from the roof to be reached by him.

The palm's straight trunk shot up twenty cubits above the roof's level, and, after the manner of the date palm's growth, bore no branches, such as the doum palm has.
"How did Pentaur climb ?" thought Timokles.
The lad passed to the other edge, where the merchant had disappeared.

Here, a little lower as yet than the roof, he found a group of young doum palms, the branching stems of which variety of trees he had noticed here and there in forest-like clumps throughout the oasis.

Timokles found no difficulty in descending with the doum palms' help, and he reflected that perhaps food for the leopard was often brought up this way, and thrown to the creature through the roof's holes.