Little by little, however, they disappeared. Then the green of each oasis shrank toward the center, about the spring or well, and often before midsummer was over, they too had dried away.
The prospect of loneliness, however, was not at all disheartening to Kanana. He had no desire to meet with any one, least of all with such parties as would be apt to cross the desert at this season.
If a moving shadow appeared in the distance, he turned well to one side and had the dromedary lie down upon the sand till it passed.
The black dromedary was fresh, and the Bedouin boy knew well how to make the most of his strength while it lasted; but it was for Allah and Arabia that they crossed the desert, and Kanana felt that neither his own life nor that of the dromedary could be accounted of value compared with the demand for haste.
He paid no heed to the usual camping-grounds for caravans, except to be sure that he passed two of them every night till the dromedary's strength began to fail.
Each morning the sun was well upon its way before he halted for the day, and long before it set again he was following his shadow upon the sand.
More and more the dromedary felt the strain. When twelve nights had passed, the pride of the caliph was anything but a tempting prize, and Kanana would hardly have troubled himself to turn out for a caravan even if he had thought it a band of robbers.
The Bedouin boy, too, was thoroughly worn and exhausted. For days they had been without water, checking their thirst by chewing the prickly leaves of the little desert vine that is the last sign of life upon the drying sand. No dew fell at this season, and Kanana realized that it was only a matter of hours as to how much longer they could hold out.
Morning came without a sign of water or of life, as far as the eye could reach.
The sun rose higher, and Kanana longed for the sight of a human being as intensely as at first he had dreaded it.