“What, on in front?” said the professor quickly; “for goodness’ sake, then, let’s go another way!”
The Sheikh looked at him half-protestingly, and shrugged his shoulders a little.
“Does his Excellency mean to go back the way we came?” he said. “It is very bad, and if we go by here we shall soon be outside upon the wide plain where we can ride round to the gate near the Emir’s palace.”
“Then by all means let’s go on,” said the professor.
“There may be nothing dead,” said the Sheikh. “I think not, for the birds are waiting.”
There was evidently, though, some attraction, for the numbers of the birds were increasing as they pushed on, to ride out into an opening all at once—a place which had probably been a garden surrounded by buildings, now fast crumbling into dust, and here upon one side, not a dozen yards away, lay the attraction which had drawn the scavenger birds together, at least a hundred more that they had not previously seen dotting the ruins in all directions.
“What a place!” said the professor, halting the beast he rode, which, like its fellows, instead of paying the slightest heed seemed to welcome the rest; and they all stood bowing their heads gently as if it were a mere matter of course, and no broad hint of their fate in the to-come.
For there, crouched down with its legs doubled beneath, was a large camel, evidently in the last stage of weakness and disease, its ragged coat and flaccid hump hanging over to one side, bowing its head slowly at the waiting vultures, that calm, bald-headed and silent, sat about with their weird heads apparently down between their shoulders—a great gathering, waiting for the banquet that was to be theirs.
Frank had hard work to repress the words which rose to his lips, and he signed to the Sheikh as he urged his beast forward.
“Hold hard a minute,” said the professor; “it is not nice, but I want to see in the cause of natural history. I never saw a camel die.”