The process of watering the camels was carried on with the utmost diligence and care. It was too important to be trifled with, or negligently performed. While filling the capacious stomachs of the quadrupeds, their owners were but laying in a stock for themselves.
As Sailor Bill jocularly remarked, “it was like filling the water-casks of a man-of-war previous to weighing anchor for a voyage.” In truth, very similar was the purpose for which these ships of the desert were being supplied; for, when filling the capacious stomachs of the quadrupeds, their owners were not without the reflection that the supply might yet pass into their own. Such a contingency was not improbable, neither would it be new.
For this reason the operation was conducted with diligence and care, no camel being led away from the pool until it was supposed to have had a “surfeit”, and this point was settled by seeing the water poured in at its nostrils running out at its mouth.
As each in turn got filled, it was taken back to the tribe to which it belonged; for the united hordes had by this time become separated into two distinct parties, preparatory to starting off on their respective routes.
Our adventurers could now perceive a marked difference between the two bands of Saara wanderers into whose hands they had unfortunately fallen. As already stated, the black sheik was an African of the true negro type, with thick lips, flattened nostrils, woolly hair, and heels projecting several inches to the rear of his ankle-joints. Most of his following were similarly “furnished”, though not all of them. There were a few of mixed colour, with straight hair, and features almost Caucasian, who submitted to his rule, or rather to his ownership, since these last all appeared to be his slaves.
Those who trooped after the old Arab were mostly of his own race, mixed with a remnant of mongrel Portuguese, descendants of the Peninsular colonists who had fled from the coast settlements after the conquest of Morocco by the victorious “Sheriffs.”
Of such mixed races are the tribes who thinly people the Saara—Arabs, Berbers, Ethiopians of every hue; all equally Bedouins, wanderers of the pathless deserts. It did not escape the observation of our adventurers that the slaves of the Arab sheik and his followers were mostly pure negroes from the south; while those of the black chieftain, as proclaimed by the colour of their skin, showed a Shemitic or Japhetic origin. The philosophic Colin could perceive in this a silent evidence of the retribution of races.
The supply of water being at length laid in, not only in the skins appropriated to the purpose, but also within the stomachs of the camels, the two tribes seem prepared to exchange with each other the parting salute, to speak the “Peace be with you!” And yet there was something that caused them to linger in each other’s proximity. Their new-made captives could tell this, though ignorant of what it might be.
It was something that had yet to be settled between the two sheiks who did not appear at this moment of leave-taking to entertain for each other any very cordial sentiment of friendship.
Could their thoughts have found expression in English words, they would have taken shape somewhat as follows:—