Heartily glad was Harold when, in the moonlight, he could trace the outlines of a group of black tents. After the long, exhausting journey, the Bedouins came to a halt at last.
A noisy party of men and boys, some of the latter wearing a most scanty amount of clothing, ran out of the tents to greet the party of travellers. The appearance of the white captives excited a great deal of interest, and there was a loud jabber of questions, curiosity being a feature in the character of the Shararat Arabs.
The camels, at a short distance from the tents, were made to kneel, and were then unloaded. Harold dismounted, but he was so stiff and weary from his long ride that he was for the first minute scarcely able to stand.
"Help me down, Mr. Hartley. I won't have these savages touch me," cried out Miss Petty in accents of distress.
Harold hastened to her assistance, and first received poor Shelah into his arms. The child clung to him in a piteous manner.
"Nay, nay, you must let me put you down, Shelah, or how can I help Miss Petty?"
Theresa, terribly exhausted, had to be lifted down like a log.
"Now I must look-out for Mrs. Evendale and my brother," said Harold. Amidst the confusion, camels, sheep, men, boys, mixed up together, Harold looked in vain for a trace of his fellow-captives. The deep shadows cast by the moonlight made the confusion more perplexing, and the young man's brain seemed to be turning round from the effect of heat and fatigue.
"Brother—woman?" inquired Harold of one Arab after another, meeting with no intelligible answer till one of the band who had seized him, pointed to a tent at some little distance. The man had mistaken the meaning of the question, and thought that Harold was inquiring whether he himself had brother or wife in the place.
"I will seek them out," said Harold; and he was about to try to make his way amongst tent-pins and over tent-ropes, when he was caught in the grasp of Miss Petty. It was a desperate grasp.