the midday sun
None could tell ; the desert horse and his rider flew by them as a swallow flies . The gleam of her Cross and the colorless calm of the childlike face that wore the resolve of a Napoleon 's on it were the last they ever saw of Cigarette . All her fluent , untiring speech was gone -- gone with the rose hue from her cheek , with the laugh from her mouth , with the child 's joyance from her heart ; but the brave , stanch , dauntless spirit lived with a soldier 's courage , with a martyr 's patience . And she rode straight through the scorch of the midday sun , along the sea-coast westward . The dizzy swiftness would have blinded most who should have been carried through the dry air and under the burning skies at that breathless and pauseless speed ; but she had ridden half-maddened colts with the skill of Arabs themselves ; she had been tossed on a holster from her earliest years , and had clung with an infant 's hands in fearless glee to the mane of roughriders ' chargers . She never swerved , she never sickened ; she was borne on and on against the hard , hot currents of the cleft air with only one sense -- that she went so slowly , so slowly , when with every beat of the ringing hoofs one of the few moments of a charmed life fled away ! She had a long route before her ; she had many leagues to travel , and there were but four-and-twenty hours , she knew well , left to the man who was condemned to death .