Excerpt from The Chastisement of Mansour Indistinct shapes would suddenly cross our path; and giant bats, darting from the ravines, fluttered round our heads. Now and again two glowing sparks would shine out in some dark thicket, and the deep covert by the road-side shake with a low rustling sound. The desert was peopled with invisible foes, the silence broken by weird, mysterious noises. I was listening mechanically to the heavy, monotonous beat, beat of the horses' hoofs, as they paced wearily over the stony soil, and the shrill croaking of the marsh-frogs that now and again reached our ears from the bottom of the valley, when mv Spahi's voice broke the dreary Spell, bursting gaily into song. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.