“Yes, my fine fellow, you had better. Now then, we’ve made our start, and you don’t feel so glum, do you?”
“No.”
“There’s the reason,” said the professor cheerily, as he pointed to the sun peering over the edge of the desert. “Nothing like that golden ball for sweeping away clouds of every kind. The only objection to his work is that he is a bit too thorough at times, and treats people out here as if they were meant to cook. Now then, look back as well as forward; the camels march like a line of grenadiers. Just as if they had been drilled.”
“But so slowly—so slowly,” said Frank, with a sigh.
“Here, look sharp, Sol!” cried the professor. “Get higher; there’s another cloud.”
“How can you be so light-hearted at a time like this?” said Frank bitterly.
“Because ‘A merry heart goes all the day; your sad tires in a mile-a,’ as Shakespeare says. Because we should never carry out our plans to success if we went at them with sad hearts. I found that out over many of my searches here. An eager, cheery captain makes an eager, cheery crew who laugh at wreck. Now then, I am going to demolish—with the help of the sun—that great, dense black cloud that has just risen above your mental horizon, my sable friend. Your fresh cloud is the slow one. Now, you must remember that we have given up civilisation, steam, electricity, and the like, to take up the regular and only way of travelling here in the desert. Some day, perhaps, we shall have the railway and wires from north to south; but until we do we must travel by caravan, and to travel by caravan you must travel in caravan fashion, in the old, long proved style. You would like to hurry on and do fifty miles the first day, instead of ten or fifteen.”
“Of course,” said Frank, “with such things at stake.”
“Exactly, my dear boy, and very naturally. Well, we’ll say you’d like to go forty miles to-day?”
“Yes.”