Our Attendants, However, Were Not To Be Cheated Of The
Delight That They Felt In Speaking To New Listeners And Hearing
Fresh Voices Once More.
The masters, therefore, had no sooner
passed each other than their respective servants quietly stopped
and entered into conversation.
As soon as my camel found that her
companions were not following her she caught the social feeling and
refused to go on. I felt the absurdity of the situation, and
determined to accost the stranger if only to avoid the awkwardness
of remaining stuck fast in the Desert whilst our servants were
amusing themselves. When with this intent I turned round my camel
I found that the gallant officer who had passed me by about thirty
or forty yards was exactly in the same predicament as myself. I
put my now willing camel in motion and rode up towards the
stranger, who seeing this followed my example and came forward to
meet me. He was the first to speak. He was much too courteous to
address me as if he admitted the possibility of my wishing to
accost him from any feeling of mere sociability or civilian-like
love of vain talk. On the contrary, he at once attributed my
advances to a laudable wish of acquiring statistical information,
and accordingly, when we got within speaking distance, he said, "I
dare say you wish to know how the plague is going on at Cairo?"
And then he went on to say, he regretted that his information did
not enable him to give me in numbers a perfectly accurate statement
of the daily deaths. He afterwards talked pleasantly enough upon
other and less ghastly subjects. I thought him manly and
intelligent, a worthy one of the few thousand strong Englishmen to
whom the empire of India is committed.
The night after the meeting with the people of the caravan,
Dthemetri, alarmed by their warnings, took upon himself to keep
watch all night in the tent. No robbers came except a jackal, that
poked his nose into my tent from some motive of rational curiosity.
Dthemetri did not shoot him for fear of waking me. These brutes
swarm in every part of Syria, and there were many of them even in
the midst of the void sands, that would seem to give such poor
promise of food. I can hardly tell what prey they could be hoping
for, unless it were that they might find now and then the carcass
of some camel that had died on the journey. They do not marshal
themselves into great packs like the wild dogs of Eastern cities,
but follow their prey in families, like the place-hunters of
Europe. Their voices are frightfully like to the shouts and cries
of human beings. If you lie awake in your tent at night you are
almost continually hearing some hungry family as it sweeps along in
full cry. You hear the exulting scream with which the sagacious
dam first winds the carrion, and the shrill response of the
unanimous cubs as they sniff the tainted air, "Wha!
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