It Was Not, I Confess, Without A Sensation Of Awe That I Swept With
My Sight The Vacant Round Of
The horizon, and remembered that I was
all alone, and unprovisioned in the midst of the arid waste; but
this
Very awe gave tone and zest to the exultation with which I
felt myself launched. Hitherto, in all my wandering, I had been
under the care of other people - sailors, Tatars, guides, and
dragomen had watched over my welfare, but now at last I was here in
this African desert, and I MYSELF, AND NO OTHER, HAD CHARGE OF MY
LIFE. I liked the office well. I had the greasiest part of the
day before me, a very fair dromedary, a fur pelisse, and a brace of
pistols, but no bread and no water; for that I must ride - and ride
I did.
For several hours I urged forward my beast at a rapid though steady
pace, but now the pangs of thirst began to torment me. I did not
relax my pace, however, and I had not suffered long when a moving
object appeared in the distance before me. The intervening space
was soon traversed, and I found myself approaching a Bedouin Arab
mounted on a camel, attended by another Bedouin on foot. They
stopped. I saw that, as usual, there hung from the pack-saddle of
the camel a large skin water-flask, which seemed to be well filled.
I steered my dromedary close up alongside of the mounted Bedouin,
caused my beast to kneel down, then alighted, and keeping the end
of the halter in my hand, went up to the mounted Bedouin without
speaking, took hold of his water-flask, opened it, and drank long
and deep from its leathern lips.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 245 of 325
Words from 67422 to 67716
of 89094
