The Stars Glitter With Exceeding Brilliance.[FN#3] At This Hour Are

"-River and hill and wood, With all the numberless goings on of life, Inaudible as dreams";

While the planets look down upon you with the faces of smiling friends. You feel the "sweet influence of the Pleiades." You are bound by the "bond of Orion." Hesperus bears with him a thousand things. In communion with them your hours pass swiftly by, till the heavy dews warn you to cover up your face and sleep. And with one look at a certain little Star in the north, under which lies all that makes life worth living through-surely it is a venial superstition to sleep with your eyes towards that Kiblah!-you fall into oblivion.

Those thirty-six hours were a trial even to the hard-headed Badawin. The Syrian and his two friends fell ill. Omar Effendi, it is true, had the courage to say his

[p.210] sunset prayers, but the exertion so altered him that he looked another man. Salih Shakkar in despair ate dates till threatened with a dysentery. Sa'ad the Demon had rigged out for himself a cot three feet long, which, arched over with bent bamboo, and covered with cloaks, he had slung on to the larboard side; but the loud grumbling which proceeded from his nest proved that his precaution had not been a cure. Even the boy Mohammed forgot to chatter, to scold, to smoke, and to make himself generally disagreeable.

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