“The first, as they hurried along, was saying in fearful undertones:
“‘They have not yet a camel among them! Yet camels they must have or the terrible sentence will be pronounced!’
“‘Yes!’ returned his companion in a horrified whisper, ‘I fear greatly for my relatives in that town, and I am proceeding there to make certain that they shall have at least one camel in so terrible a time! For if a sufficiency of camels is not there by to-morrow noon I hear they are all to be impaled!’
“So speaking in subdued accents of terror, little knowing they were overheard, they walked on while I followed and noted every word.
“My mind was immediately made up. I continued, with stealthy feet, to follow these two anxious beings who were so engrossed in the coming misfortunes of their native place. At last, when we had come to an empty space where three streets met, I caught them up and faced them. Accosting them I said:
“‘Sirs, are you bound for such and such a place?’ (naming a town of which they could never have heard—for indeed it did not exist).
“They stopped and looked at me in surprise.
“‘No, sir,’ they answered me together, ‘we are bound in all haste for our native place which is threatened with a great calamity. Its name is Mawur, but, alas, it is far distant from us—a matter of some twenty leagues—the desert lies between, and we shall hardly reach it within the day that remains. For we are poor men, and only with fast camels’ (at this word they glanced at each other and shuddered) ‘could the journey be accomplished in the time.’
‘I thanked them politely, regretted that I had disturbed them for so little, proceeded with the utmost haste to my caravan, inquired the road for Mawur (the track for which lay plain through the scrub and across the sand), and hastened with the utmost dispatch all that burning day and all the succeeding night without repose, until at dawn I passed with my exhausted train through the gates of the city. I had covered in twenty hours twice as many leagues.