He loathed the luxury of his dwelling, and longed to ask the meaning of many things, amongst them the cause of the dogs’ hatred for the Arabian woman and of the empty sockets in the face of the man he encountered so often on his path, but with whom he had not spoken.
But believing that his adventure must soon end, and knowing the Oriental’s dislike of investigation into what concerns him privately, he asked no questions, in which he showed his wisdom; truth, in an answer to a straight question, being about as rare in the East as moss in the desert. He rode and bathed and hunted and ate and slept whilst waiting for something to fix his departure, ignorant of the fact that Helen, watched closely day and night, a prey to an overwhelming, secret fear, bravely endured the discomforts of her restricted life on the far side of the jutting rock wall he could see from his door.
He had almost forgotten Zarah’s criminal reputation; had grown accustomed to her continual presence and well-meant, if tiresome, ministrations. He thought that the day of sport and night of feasting and dancing had been arranged to celebrate her union with the handsome Nubian, against whom he had found himself so often pitted in the sports.
He turned to look for Al-Asad as he raced at Zarah’s side across the desert at the head of a hundred men and, carried out of himself at the magnificent sight, shouted as he rode, taking no more notice than they did of the extraordinary appearance of the sky to the south-east, mistaking the distant phenomenon for a part of the sunset, which was making a blazing, fiery furnace of the sky in the west.
Zarah and Ralph Trenchard headed fifty men, who, their white cloaks streaming behind them in the evening breeze, shouted and laughed as they rode, separated by the Patriarch, Al-Asad and Bowlegs from fifty of their brethren, who, their white cloaks streaming behind them in the evening breeze, shouted and laughed as they urged their hejeen, or dromedaries, to their swiftest pace.
To mix camels and horses in a hunt, or at any other time, is a dire and foolish and fruitless task, giving rise to pitched battles between the beasts and broken heads amongst their riders. But Zarah’s men looked forward to the inevitable fight which decided the question of the horse or the camel’s precedence over the secret path at the end of a day’s hunting; it gave them all such a chance of paying off bad debts and old scores and such an appetite for the meal prepared for them by their patient, downtrodden womenfolk.
Al-Asad sang at the top of his golden tenor voice as he guided his magnificent dromedary from Oman with his feet, and with his spear prodded the cheetahs, with which they had been hunting, between the bars of the specially made cage strapped on the back of the dromedary he led. Bowlegs led another dromedary, upon whose shedad or baggage saddle were piled the gazelle, ostrich and bunches of kangaroo-rat which constituted the not particularly good bag for a day’s hunting in the desert.
The Patriarch, looking as must Moses have looked if he bestrode a camel in rounding up the trapesing tribes of Israel, rode between the two men, with whom he conversed as best he could for the laughter and shouts of the men and the rumblings of the camels.
He looked at Ralph Trenchard and Zarah as they rode together just ahead and shook his head.