“That’s right, and the best thing you can do is to enter into the journey from a keen observer’s point of view. Now look before you. What can you see?”
“A wide expanse of sand baking in the sunshine.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Ah, that shows how uneducated your eyes are, and how much they have to learn. I’m not very clever over such things, being best when I get scent of a buried temple, tomb, or city. But this waste of nothingness contains plenty to interest an observer, and I can help you a little if you will try to make the best of our journey.”
“I have told you I will,” said Frank.
“Yes; so we’ll begin at once, for you may believe me that we are not going to journey fifteen or twenty miles to-day without seeing something more interesting than sand. Here’s my little binocular. Take it, and we’ll begin.”
“First of all, though,” said Frank, “are we bound for some particular place this evening?”
“Of course. For another patch of water-holes. Ibrahim says they are nothing like so good as those by the encampment, but they will do for the night’s halt. To-morrow we shall have to halt right in the desert and depend upon the water we take with us. The next day we journey on to fresh wells.”
“I see,” said Frank; “our journeys are regulated by the supplies of water.”