“Couldn’t be done. Men can’t walk forty miles over hot sand under a desert sun.”
“Then why not have had more camels?”
“Because camels can suffer like men. You would knock up your desert ships, and make them sore-footed the first day, have great difficulty in getting them half the distance the next day, half that the third, and no distance at all the fourth.”
“So bad as that?” said Frank.
“Most likely a good deal worse. Now we have old Ibrahim and his men, who know camels exactly, understand their constitutions, how much they can do, and how to get them to do it. You see, we are not going on a week’s journey.”
“A week’s!” said Frank bitterly; “at this rate it will be six months.”
“Perhaps a year’s,” said the professor quietly.
“A year’s?”
“Possibly; and if a camel should break down we can’t send round to the livery stable in the next street, or order a fresh one from the Stores. No one knows that better than the Sheikh. He is making the caravan travel so that it can go on for a year if necessary, and at the end of that year the camels, which mean life to us, will be fit to go on for another year.”
“But Harry—Harry—Harry!” sighed Frank sadly.