At First There Was A Mere Moving Speck On The Horizon.
My
party of course became all alive with excitement, and there were
many surmises.
Soon it appeared that three laden camels were
approaching, and that two of them carried riders. In a little
while we saw that one of the riders wore the European dress, and at
last the travellers were pronounced to be an English gentleman and
his servant. By their side there were a couple, I think, of Arabs
on foot, and this was the whole party.
You, you love sailing; in returning from a cruise to the English
coast you see often enough a fisherman's humble boat far away from
all shores, with an ugly black sky above and an angry sea beneath.
You watch the grizzly old man at the helm carrying his craft with
strange skill through the turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-
limbed, yet weather-worn already, and with steady eyes that look
through the blast, you see him understanding commandments from the
jerk of his father's white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting
go, now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, or baling out
death with a pipkin. Stale enough is the sight, and yet when I see
it I always stare anew, and with a kind of Titanic exultation,
because that a poor boat with the brain of a man and the hands of a
boy on board can match herself so bravely against black heaven and
ocean. Well, so when you have travelled for days and days over an
Eastern desert without meeting the likeness of a human being, and
then at last see an English shooting-jacket and his servant come
listlessly slouching along from out of the forward horizon, you
stare at the wide unproportion between this slender company and the
boundless plains of sand through which they are keeping their way.
This Englishman, as I afterwards found, was a military man
returning to his country from India, and crossing the Desert at
this part in order to go through Palestine. As for me, I had come
pretty straight from England, and so here we met in the wilderness
at about half-way from our respective starting-points. As we
approached each other it became with me a question whether we
should speak. I thought it likely that the stranger would accost
me, and in the event of his doing so I was quite ready to be as
sociable and chatty as I could be according to my nature; but still
I could not think of anything particular that I had to say to him.
Of course, among civilised people the not having anything to say is
no excuse at all for not speaking, but I was shy and indolent, and
I felt no great wish to stop and talk like a morning visitor in the
midst of those broad solitudes. The traveller perhaps felt as I
did, for except that we lifted our hands to our caps and waved our
arms in courtesy, we passed each other as if we had passed in Bond
Street.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 102 of 170
Words from 53750 to 54269
of 89094