“Ah, I don’t think they will hurt us much, my boy,” said the professor.
“And there is one comfort,” added Mr Burne; “we have left the cemetery behind. I do protest against camping there.”
“A cemetery of two thousand years ago,” said the professor quietly. “Ah, Burne, we need not make that an objection. But come, what is to be done?”
Yussuf answered the question by calling Hamed to come and help unpack the horses, and all then set to work to prepare to pass the night in the midst of the ruins, and without much prospect of a fire being made.
Chapter Thirty One.
Ali Baba’s Feat.
The night came on colder and colder, and though Yussuf and Hamed worked hard at cutting bushes and branches of trees, the green wood covered with leaves obstinately refused to burn, and the result was a thick smoke, which hung about and spread amongst the dust, making the position of the travellers worse than before. Yussuf searched as far as he could, but he could find no pines, neither were there any bushes of the laurel family, or the result would have been different.
All this while they were suffering from a nervous trepidation that made even a heavy footfall startling, every one being in expectation of a renewal of the earthquake shocks.