Why should he try to stop the camel? Why should he get down? Why should he not go on and on for ever riding, riding through an endless desert of swarming, crawling, creeping locusts, which stretched across the heavens and the earth from north to south, from east to wrest? Was it not the will of Allah? Was not ...? Up he went and down, hanging on to the coarse hair just above the camel’s shoulders, up and down, and then on and on, evenly, smoothly, whilst the locusts whistled like a tropical hailstorm and the sky lighted way down in the east as the great curtain of insects swept towards and away to the west.
And he went on and on, shuddering under the feeling of the locusts crawling over him when they had long since taken flight, leaving him and his camel free; on and on through the journey of the scorching day which followed the journey of the night, and still onward in the way which was to lead him to certain knowledge of the girl he loved; on and on, with his head bent to his knees and his hands clutching the coarse hair, mercifully unconscious at last.
On and on, until a range of mountains showed faintly in the far distance and the sun went down behind it, just as, many miles away, two Arabs, journeying towards the Oasis of Hareek, drew Abdul out from under his dead camel and, finding that he breathed, straightened the broken leg between improvised splints, and placed him gently upon the third camel, which carried all their worldly belongings.
CHAPTER XIII
“Under every downhanging head dwells a thousand mischiefs.”—Arabic Proverb.
Namlah had been superseded.
No suspicion whatever attached to her, but, whether her curses had been too potent or the blow of the water-jar too much for him, the man who had partaken of much good red wine the night of Helen’s attempted escape had died.
That, in connexion with certain gossip concerning Namlah’s friendship and enthusiastic praise of the white woman, decided Zarah. She sent her packing, without warning, and in her stead put a villainously ugly, surly negress incapable of speech, much less of a kind thought or deed, who proceeded to follow the prisoner at a distance wherever she went, thereby rendering speech with blind Yussuf impossible.