The night in the desert was not altogether unpleasant, for that rarefied clearness of sky which renders the heat of the sun so intolerable by day, makes the sky of night surpassingly beautiful, and that is the time when, if he can, the traveller should really make his way over the sandy waste.
With early morning, and while the red sun was yet below the hazy horizon, came full awakening after a somewhat restless night, broken by periods of watchfulness and anxiety, and tantalized by dreams of flowing and sparkling water, which left the pangs of growing thirst keener than ever.
Hassan, however, seemed 'fresh as a daisy,' having, as Malcolm strongly suspected, some secret store of his own selfishly concealed about him.
They gave their camels a feed of their favourite food, the twigs of some thorny mimosa that grew near the dried-up well—scanty herbage of the desert—and then Malcolm, who distrusted the skill or fealty, or both, of Hassan Abdullah, while the latter was kneeling on his prayer carpet, turned to consult his pocket compass with reference to the direction in which to steer through the waste of sand which now spread in every direction around them.
It was gone!
Nervously, with fingers that trembled in their haste, he searched his haversack, turning out its few contents again and again, and cast keen glances all around where he had been overnight, but no sign or trace of that invaluable instrument, on which too probably his life depended, was there!
Fiercely he turned to Hassan, then just ending his morning prayer and folding up his carpet, suspecting that the soft and swift-handed Egyptian must have filched it from him during sleep—yet he had felt so wakeful that such could scarcely be the case.
'My compass!' he exclaimed.
'What of it, Yusbashi?'
'Have you seen it?'