Homeward Bound; Or, the Chase: A Tale of the Sea

by James Fenimore Cooper

"That lad is in a category," whispered the captain; "it now remains to be seen if there is another."

A long search was not rewarded with success, and it was determined to lead the camel down the path, with a view to prevent his being seen by any wanderer in the morning.

"If we get the lower masts out betimes," continued the captain, "these land pirates will have no beacons in sight to steer by, and, in a country in which one grain of sand is so much like another, they might hunt a week before they made a happy landfall."

The approach of the two towards the camel was made with less caution than usual, the success of their enterprise throwing them off their guard, and exciting their spirits. They believed in short, that their captive was either a solitary wanderer, or that he had been sent ahead as a scout, by some party that would be likely to follow in the morning.

"We must be up and at work before the sun, Mr. Leach," said the captain, speaking clearly, but in a low tone, as they approached the camel. The head of the animal was tossed; then it seemed to snuff the air, and it gave a shriek. In the twinkling of an eye an Arab sprang from the sand, on which he had been sleeping, and was on the creature's back. He was seen to look around him, and before the startled mariners had time to decide on their course, the beast, which was a dromedary trained to speed, was out of sight in the darkness. Captain Truck had thrown forward his fowling-piece, but he did not fire.

"We have no right to shoot the fellow," he said, "and our hope is now in the distance he will have to ride to join his comrades. If we have got a chief, as I suspect, we will make a hostage of him, and turn him to as much account, as he can possibly turn one of his own camels. Depend on it we shall see no more of them for several hours, and we will seize the opportunity to get a little sleep. A man must have his watch below, or he gets to be as dull and as obstinate as a top-maul."

The captain having made up his mind to this plan was not slow in putting it in execution. Returning to the beach they liberated the legs of their prisoner, whom they found lying like a log on the sands, and made him mount the staging to the deck of the ship. Leading the way into the cabin, Mr. Truck examined the fellow by a light, turning him round and commenting on his points very much as he might have done had the captive been any other animal of the desert.

The Arab was a swarthy, sinewy man of forty, with all his fibres indurated and worked down to the whip-cord meagreness and rigidity of a racer, his frame presenting a perfect picture of the sort of being one would fancy suited to the exhausting motion of a dromedary, and to the fare of a desert. He carried a formidable knife, in addition to the long musket of which he had been deprived, and his principal garment was the coarse mantle of camel's hair, that served equally for cap, coat and robe. His wild dark eyes gleamed, as Captain Truck passed the lamp before his face, and it was sufficiently apparent that he fancied a very serious misfortune had befallen him. As any verbal communication was out of the question, some abortive attempts were essayed by the two mariners to make themselves understood by signs, which, like some men's reasoning, produced results exactly contrary to what had been expected.

"Perhaps the poor fellow fancies we mean to eat him, Leach," observed the captain, after trying his skill in pantomime for some time without success; "and he has some grounds for the idea, as he was felled like an ox that is bound to the kitchen. Try and let the miserable wretch understand, at least, that we are not cannibals."

Hereupon the mate commenced an expressive pantomime, which described, with sufficient clearness, the process of skinning, cutting up, cooking, and eating the carcass of the Arab, with the humane intention of throwing a negative over the whole proceeding, by a strong sign of dissent at the close; but there are no proper substitutes for the little monosyllables of "yes" and "no," and the meaning of the interpreter got to be so confounded that the captain himself was mystified.