His hair had grown long, like my own, for it was a protection from sun and cold, and hung upon his neck, a curling, golden mane, as his great beard hung upon his breast, spreading outwards almost to the massive shoulders.

The face, too--what could be seen of it--was beautiful though burnt brown with weather; refined and full of thought, sombre almost, and in it, clear as crystal, steady as stars, shone his large grey eyes.
And I--I was what I have always been--ugly and hirsute, iron-grey now also, but in spite of my sixty odd years, still wonderfully strong, for my strength seemed to increase with time, and my health was perfect.

In fact, during all this period of rough travels, although now and again we had met with accidents which laid us up for awhile, neither of us had known a day of sickness.

Hardship seemed to have turned our constitutions to iron and made them impervious to every human ailment.
Or was this because we alone amongst living men had once inhaled the breath of the Essence of Life?
Our fears relieved--for notwithstanding our foodless night, as yet neither of us showed any signs of exhaustion--we turned to contemplate the landscape.

At our feet beyond a little belt of fertile soil, began a great desert of the sort with which we were familiar--sandy, salt-encrusted, treeless, waterless, and here and there streaked with the first snows of winter.