"THE ARAB SET OFF ALONG A PATH WITHIN SOME TWENTY YARDS OF OUR HEROES"
"Better see where she goes," said Geoff. "We'll slink through the trees and make quite sure that they are both out of sight. Shouldn't wonder if he's a simple shepherd, and has gone to visit his flock somewhere about in this oasis; and it's more than likely that she has gone into Bagdad to buy things for the household. Sounds curious, doesn't it? But you've got to remember that people here are very much the same in many ways as people back in old England. Commodities of every kind don't grow in houses; they have to be bought. And stores and shops don't exist in the country, so Turkish and Arab women, like the folks at home, have to go off on shopping expeditions."
Whatever it was that had taken the woman off, it proved, indeed, to be a godsend to these two wandering and hungry subalterns, for the woman disappeared finally down the road leading towards Bagdad, while careful investigation proved that the man had gone off to the left, where he could be seen trudging over the grass-covered land quite a mile distant. As for the hut, it looked lonely enough when they went back, and uninhabited, though the fire still smouldered in front, and that delightful aroma still reached their nostrils.
"Well, do we stop here in the shade of the trees, and just satisfy ourselves with a sniff of that stew cooking in the pot we're looking at?" exclaimed Philip in somewhat injured, if not impatient, tones, as he looked out into the sunlit arena in which the dilapidated hut was situated. "Um!" he sighed; "it's mutton, or—or—or perhaps goat."
He snuffed at the air and projected his head beyond a leafy stem, his eyes attracted far more by the fire and the cooking-pot above it than by the hut, and his thoughts occupied with a possible chance of a meal rather than with the possibility of the hut harbouring further inhabitants. But the cautious Geoff, even then—his mouth watering at the appetizing odour of the cooking food, and his hunger made twofold by it—even then was not to be led into a position which might be harmful to them. Cautious by nature—as we have inferred already—possessed, that is to say, of a certain amount of discretion, which stood him and his subaltern chum in good stead on many an occasion, he was yet not altogether deficient in that dash and go which are so common in our subalterns, which, indeed, make all of them such a valuable asset to the British army.
"You hang on here," he told his chum. "I'll skirmish round a little and see what's doing. Perhaps there's someone else in the hut, and if so we should look silly, shouldn't we, if we tackled the food and had a fellow firing into us with a blunderbuss when least expected?"
Rapid strides took him along the edge of the palm-trees, the grass rustling at his feet as he trudged through it, and in a little while he was behind the hut, to find it rather less prepossessing in rear than it was in front, dilapidated, broken, and presenting many a ragged opening. Squinting through more than one of these, Geoff could see the interior quite plainly, for the sunlight was streaming in through the open door on the farther side. Then he boldly went round one end and entered, to find, as he had expected, that the place was entirely empty. Turning about, he and Philip met above the fire, their noses thrust over the cooking-pot, sniffing hungrily.
"Jingo! Mutton, I'll swear!"
"Goat'll taste just as good, just the same, no doubt," Geoff laughed heartily. "Hook it off, Phil, while I go and look for some sort of plates," he cried, "and let's be slippy, or else the owners will be coming back to dispute our right to make use of their property."