“Yes, I am lost,” said the youngest camel, looking from one to the other of their faces. “I thought perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell me which way the oasis lies.”
“I must say he’s quite truthful,” said Annie with a gulp as she swallowed the dead hare’s fuzzy tail.
“I haven’t always been,” said the youngest camel, “but I think I’ve learned my lesson now and I’m trying very hard not to lie any more. But now that you tell me the sun isn’t going the same way today as it did yesterday, I simply don’t know what to do—”
“It would have been better for your sake if you hadn’t told the truth this time,” said Mabel, ignoring his last remark. Then she turned back to the business before them and began slicing the hare’s heart into neat roast-beef-like portions with her beak.
“But why?” asked the youngest camel, rather disgusted at the way the two sisters grabbed and squawked over their meal.
“Well, as long as you’re lost,” said Annie, “then you can’t find the oasis, and if you can’t find the oasis then you’re sure to die in another two or three days—” She paused to pick her teeth reflectively with the yellow claw of one foot. “You’re small but you’re rather well covered with meat,” she said in a moment, and at this the two sisters looked at each other and cackled out loud.
Suddenly, the poor little camel realized what their conversation was all about and he gave a scream of terror. He reared up on his hind legs with fright and spun around, and set off as fast as he could across the desert. He had no idea which way he was going and it didn’t matter much any more whether he was lost or not. He only knew he must get out of sight of the two bald sisters, and out of the sound of their chortling laughter. So he ran at full speed until the midday sun beat down on his head like fire, and then he slowed into a walk. He hoped that walking quietly along would make his heart stop beating so fast and loud with fear, and he tried making up some rhymed poetry so as to steady his nerves. But nothing sounded right to him, neither the sonnet form, nor rondos, nor madrigals, nor pastorals, nor odes. The laments and ballads and elegies were even less successful, so in despair he decided on just trying to write a letter to his mother in verse, but he couldn’t think of a single original or even beautiful line.
“Dear Mother [he began], how in the world am I going to get on without you?
I miss your hump and your sore hip and everything about you.
“That’s just plain statement of fact. That isn’t poetry,” he interrupted himself severely. “Now see if you can’t think of something really lyrical the way you used to at the oasis at night.”