Both Of The Bedouins Stood Fast
In Amazement And Mute Horror; And Really, If They Had Never
Happened To See An European Before, The Apparition Was Enough To
Startle Them.
To see for the first time a coat and a waistcoat,
with the semblance of a white human head
At the top, and for this
ghastly figure to come swiftly out of the horizon upon a fleet
dromedary, approach them silently and with a demoniacal smile, and
drink a deep draught from their water-flask - this was enough to
make the Bedouins stare a little; they, in fact, stared a great
deal - not as Europeans stare, with a restless and puzzled
expression of countenance, but with features all fixed and rigid,
and with still, glassy eyes. Before they had time to get
decomposed from their state of petrifaction I had remounted my
dromedary, and was darting away towards the east.
Without pause or remission of pace I continued to press forward,
but after a while I found to my confusion that the slight track
which had hitherto guided me now failed altogether. I began to
fear that I must have been all along following the course of some
wandering Bedouins, and I felt that if this were the case, my fate
was a little uncertain.
I had no compass with me, but I determined upon the eastern point
of the horizon as accurately as I could by reference to the sun,
and so laid down for myself a way over the pathless sands.
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