"How are you getting on, Sam?" said Frank, after they had progressed
about a mile, during which the outskirts of the city had given place to
garden, cultivated field, trees dotted here and there, and then hedges
which looked weird, ghastly, and strange in the moonlight, being
composed of those fleshy, nightmare-looking plants of cactus growth, the
prickly pears, with their horrible thorns, while more and more the way
in front began to spread out wild, desolate and strange in the soft,
misty, silvery grey of the moonlight, through which the long-legged
animals stalked, casting weird shadows upon the soft, sandy road, and
save for one thing the passing of the little train would have been in an
oppressive silence, for the spongy feet of the birdlike animals rose and
fell without a sound.
"How'm I getting on, sir?" was the reply. "Well, about as bad as a man
can. Look at me, sir; there I am. That's my shadder. I don't know
what our servants at home would say to see me going along over the sand
this how. Look at my shadder, sir; looks like a monkey a-top of a
long-legged shed."
"The shadows do look strange, Sam."
"Strange, sir? They _look_ horrid. Just like so many ghosts out for a
holiday, and it's us. And look at what makes the shadders. They look
creepy in the moonshine. Why, if we was out on a country road now in
dear old England, and the police on duty saw us we should give 'em
fits."
"Rather startling, certainly," said Frank. "It does look a weird
procession."
"Seems a mad sort of a set out altogether, sir: three British gentlemen
and a respectable servant going out for a ride in the night in a place
like this a-top of these excruciating animals, along with so many silent
blacks dressed in long white sheets. It all seems mad to me, sir, and
as if we ought to be in bed. I fancy I am sometimes, and having
uncomfortable dreams, like one does after cold boiled beef for supper,
and keep expecting to wake up with a pain in the chest. But I don't,
for there we are sneaking along in this silent way with our tall
shadders seeming to watch us. Ugh! It's just as if we were going to do
something wicked somewhere."
"It's all so strange, Sam," said Frank quietly. "You are not used to
it."
"That's true enough, sir, and I don't feel as if I ever should be. Just
look at this thing! It's like an insult to call it a saddle. Saddle!
why it's more like--I don't know what; and I've been expecting to have
an accident with this stick-up affair here in front. How do you get on
with your legs, sir?"
"Pretty well," said Frank, smiling. "I've managed better during the
past ten minutes."
"I wish you'd show me how you do it, sir, for I get on awfully, and I'm
that sore that I'm beginning to shudder."
"It's a matter of use, Sam. Try and sit a little more upright, like
this."
"Like that, sir?" said the man, excitedly. "No, thankye, sir. It's bad
enough like this. I suppose I must grin and bear it. Here, I've tried
straightforward striddling like one would on a donkey, but this beast
don't seem to have no shape in him. Then I've tried like a lady,
sitting left-handed with my legs, and then after I've got tired that way
for a bit, and it don't work comfortable, I've tried right-handed with
my legs. But it's no good. Bit ago I saw one of these niggers shut his
legs up like a pocket foot-rule, and I says to myself, `That's the way,
then;' so I began to pull my legs up criss-cross like a Turk in a
picture."
"Well, did that do?" said Frank, listening to the man, for the remarks
kept away his own troubled thoughts.
"Nearly did for me, sir. I had to claw hold like a kitten to the top of
a basket of clothes, or I should have been down in the sand, with this
wicked-looking brute dancing a hornpipe in stilts all over me. Ugh, you
beast! don't do that."
"What's the matter?" said Frank, as the man shuddered and exclaimed at
the animal he rode.
"Oh, I do wish he wouldn't, sir. It's just as if he don't like me, and
does it on purpose."
"Does what?"
"Turns his head and neck round to look at me, just like a big giant
goose, and he opens and shuts his mouth, and leers and winks at me, sir.
It gives me quite a turn. It's bad enough when he goes on steady, but
when he does that I feel just as I did when we crossed the Channel, and
as if I must go below. I say, sir, can a man be sea-sick with riding on
a camel?"
"I don't know about sea-sick, Sam," said Frank, laughing outright, "but
I really did feel very uncomfortable at first. The motion is so
peculiar."
"Ain't it, sir?" cried Sam eagerly. "Beg your pardon sir, for saying
it, but I am glad you felt it too. It upset me so that I got thinking
I'd no business to have left my pantry, because I wasn't up to this sort
of thing."
"Cheer up, and make the best of it," said Frank quietly. "You'll soon
get accustomed to what is very new to us all."
"I will, sir. I'll try, but everything seems to be going against me.
Ugh! Look at that now. Ugh! the smell of it!"
"Smell? Why, I only notice the professor's pipe."
"Yes, sir, that's it. It seems horrid now, and there he sits with that
long, snaky pipe and his legs twisted in a knot, smoking away as
comfortably as the old Guy Fox in the tablecloth that I shaved. He went
to sleep and nodded, for I watched him, and he keeps on see-sawing and
looking as if he'd tumble off; but he seems to be good friends with his
camel, for it kept on balancing him and keeping him up. I wish I could
go to sleep too."
"Well, try," said Frank.
"Try, sir? What, to wake up with a bump, and sit in the sand seeing
this ridgment of legs and shadows going off in the distance? No, thank
you, sir. They tell me there's lions and jackals and hyaenas out here.
No, thankye, sir; I'm going to fight it out."
Just then the professor checked his camel and tried to bring it
alongside of the pair behind, when a struggle ensued, the quaint-looking
creature refusing to obey the rein or to alter its position in the
train, whining, groaning, and appealing against force being used to
place it where it made up its mind there must be danger.
"That's how those brutes that are carrying the luggage went on, sir,"
whispered Sam to Frank. "Groaning and moaning and making use of all
sorts of bad language. One of 'em kep' it up just like a human being,
and it was as if he was threatening to write to the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for them to put a stop to our ill-using
him and tying heavy things on his back and making creases with ropes on
his front--I mean his underneath, sir."
Just then one of the Sheikh's followers, who had seen the trouble, came
from where he was walking beside the baggage camels, and led the
obstinate animal to where it was required to go, and it ceased its
objections.
"Fine animals for displaying obstinacy, Frank," said the professor.
"Yes; they'd beat donkeys of the worst type."
"I daresay they would; but they have plenty of good qualities to make up
for their bad ones. How do you like the riding?"
"I'll tell you when I've had some more experience. At present it would
not be fair."
"Perhaps not," said the professor. "How do you get on, Sam?"
The butler groaned.
"Hullo! Is it as bad as that?"
"Worse, sir, ever so much. Couldn't I have a donkey, sir? I saw some
fine ones in Cairo well up to my weight."
"I'm afraid not, Sam. But you'll soon get used to the animal you are
riding."
"Never, sir, never," said Sam.
"Nonsense, man! Once you get used to the poor creatures you will think
it delightful. I could go to sleep on mine, and trust it to keep
ambling along."
"Do what, sir?"
"Ambling gently."
"Then yours is a different sort, sir, to mine. Ambling's going like a
lady's mare does in the Park, isn't it?"
"Yes, Sam; that's quite correct, I believe."
"This one don't, sir, a bit. If you shut your eyes and hold tight, sir,
you forget that he's an animal, but begin thinking he must be what he
seems like to me--a sort of giant sea-goose with you on his back and him
swimming in rough water and going up and down horrid."
"Oh, that's the peculiarity of the creature's pace. I'm used to it, and
I find the elasticity most enjoyable."
"Elastic, sir? Yes, that's just it, sir; elastic. A bit back he was
going on like an Indy-rubber ball; one o' that sort, sir, as is all wind
and skin. Made me wish he was one, and that I'd got a pin in my hand."
"Oh, never mind, my lad," said the professor good-humouredly; "its rough
work to learn riding a horse, but once you've mastered the task it's
pleasant enough. What do you think of the desert, Frank?"
"Do you consider that we have reached the desert now?" was the reply, as
Sam fell back a little, leaving them to converse.
"Oh, yes; we've left the cultivated ground behind, and right away south
and west now, saving a _few_ oases, there's nothing but the sand
covering all about here the ruins of ancient cities. I believe if we
dug anywhere here we should find traces--buildings, temples, or tombs."
"Has there been cultivation, too, here?"
"No doubt. It only wants water, sandy as it is, for it to break out
blushing with soft green."
"Where does the Nile lie from here?"
"Away to the left."
"Shall we see its waters when the morning comes?"
"No; we are going farther and farther away to a bit of an oasis where
the Sheikh's people are gathered with their flocks. They find pasture
there at this time of year, and a little employment with the travellers
who come to Cairo. In the summer time, when the city is pretty well
empty, they go right away to some high ground where it is rocky and
fairly fertile. We shall reach the present camp before the sun gets hot
in the morning."
"How is the doctor getting on?" asked Frank, after a pause.
"Pretty well. It makes him a little irritable, so I don't think I'd ask
him. He is enjoying the night ride, though."