Chapter Nine.
The Hakim Begins.
The professor had hardly finished speaking when something dark loomed up through the silvery gloom, and the camels began making a peculiar, complaining sound, while they slightly increased their pace and soon after stopped short, craning their necks and muttering and grumbling peevishly.
A water-hole had been reached, where the beasts were refreshed, after they had been relieved of their living burdens—those which were loaded with the travellers’ baggage having to be content with a good drink and then folding their legs to crouch in the sand and rest.
“Yes, it’s all very well, Mr Frank,” said Sam, “but I don’t believe that thing which carries me is half so tired as I am. Oh my! See-sawing as I’ve been backwards and forwards all these hours, till my spinal just across the loins feels as if it had got a big hinge made in it and it wanted oiling.”
“Lie flat down upon your back and rest it.”
“But won’t the grass be damp, sir?”
“Grass?” said Frank, smiling. “Where are you going to find it?”
“I forgot, sir,” said the man wearily. “No grass; all sand. That comes of being used to riding in a Christian country.”