“Your mother would never be too cold or too hot ever again,” he was saying to him. “She wouldn’t have to get drenched by storms any more or covered with snow on the steppes during the bad season. I can’t imagine why you hesitate like this.”
But at last the little camel made a great effort and he set his fuzzy chin firmly and replied:—
“No, thank you, I don’t think I will after all. But thank you just the same.”
And as soon as he had said this, another snow-white camel sprang up in the caravan.
Next came the temptation to flee before a great wall of fire which rose suddenly before them, but this too he resisted, and as he passed through it with his eyes tightly closed he did not even feel its heat; and then the temptation to cry out with fright and swoon at the sight of three dead llamas stretched out on the lonely sands; and then the temptation to sob aloud when the old camel spoke for a long time to him about his mother, and how hard she had worked all her life, and how tired she was of carrying the burdens of men. But all these he resisted, and each time he did so he saw to his joy that another beautiful white camel joined the growing caravan.
Then came the temptation of the sun, which the white leader plucked lazily out of the sky and smashed in pieces like a ripe melon on a salver which camel servants held before him.
“You see it’s a pineapple with its skin taken off,” the old camel remarked dreamily, as if it were of no importance at all. “It has a wonderful flavor—not like real fruit, of course, because it comes from heaven.”
“It looks awfully good,” said the youngest camel, and he felt his mouth watering.
“Well, there’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t have a piece. I’m going to,” said the old white camel, and he indolently chose the biggest, juiciest bit and put it in his mouth. The little camel stood watching him enviously as he chewed, and licked his own parched lips thirstily.
“I don’t think I’d better,” he said. “My mother told me it wasn’t true about the sun being a pineapple, so perhaps there’s something queer about it.”