He kept up his pace for an hour or more without seeing any sign of life either on earth or in the sky, and there was no doubt that he did not mind the nothingness and the loneliness nearly as much as he had the day before. With every step he took, he felt a little bit braver and a little bit surer that he was going in the right direction at last. So when he saw two black shapes on the desert far ahead, he said to himself:—
“I’m certain they’re nice friendly sort of creatures who will tell me how many miles the oasis lies ahead.”
On he went with eager, flying feet, and soon he saw that the two black forms were those of birds. Two enormous birds were apparently seated on the sand having a conversation together, their backs turned to him and their heads nodding and shaking as they talked. But as he came nearer, he ran less quickly towards them, for he saw their heads were bald as ostrich eggs and reddish in color, and that they were not conversing at all but tearing fiercely with their curved beaks and their great claws at something they held between them on the sand.
“It’s much wiser to be polite to everyone I meet, because one
never knows.”
“Vultures!” thought the youngest camel, and a little tremor of fear went through him, for his mother had told him stories enough of how these creatures lived. He was about to turn to one side and make a curve to avoid them, but then he remembered all that the bright-feathered, sharp-tongued little birds had said to him the night before. “It’s much wiser to be polite to everyone I meet, because one never knows,” he said to himself, and he stepped a little closer to them. “Please,” he began in a timid voice, and both vultures were so startled by the sound that they each gave a squawk and jumped a full yard into the air.
“Snakes alive!” cried one bird as she came down on the sand again and with the claws of one foot seized upon the thing they had been eating. “You ought to give some warning instead of creeping up on people like that!”
“I thought you must have seen me long ago,” said the youngest camel apologetically.
“Not at all,” said the second vulture. “We came down to finish eating this hare in peace and quiet and we had no idea anyone was spying on us.”
As she said this, she snatched up in her vicious claws the other end of what was left of the hare and started tearing at it with her beak.