CHAPTER IX.
RISING at dawn, I walked to the sea and along it until I came at last to those dunes beneath which I had stretched myself that day of grayness.
Now it was deep summer, blue and gold, and the air all balm and caressing.

The evening before I had seen the three ships where they rode in river mouth.

They were caravels, and only the _Santa Maria_, the largest, was fully decked.

Small craft with which to find India, over a road of a thousand leagues--or no road, for road means that men have toiled there and traveled there--no road, but a wilderness plain, a water desert! The Arabians say that Jinn and Afrits live in the desert away from the caravans.

If you go that way you meet fearful things and never come forth again.