midday
She had been quite right about the capabilities of the horses . They responded without any apparent effort to the further demand made of them . The one in particular that Diana was riding moved in a swift , easy gallop that was the perfection of motion . They had been riding for some hours when they came to the first oasis that had been sighted since leaving the one where the midday halt was made . Diana pulled up her horse to look at it , for it was unusually beautiful in the luxuriousness and arrangement of its group of palms and leafy bushes . Some pigeons were cooing softly , hidden from sight amongst the trees , with a plaintive melancholy that somehow seemed in keeping with the deserted spot . Beside the well , forming a triangle , stood what had been three particularly fine palm trees , but the tops had been broken off about twenty feet up from the ground , and the mutilated trunks reared themselves bare and desolate-looking .