In the Mahdi's Grasp Part 17

"Yes, of course. You're not afraid?"

"Afraid, sir? Not me. I've rid most everything, and I meant to have gone up to the Zoo for a lesson in camels, only there warn't time. I'm not afraid, and I'm going to do it, but I do begin to feel as if I ought to be tied on."

However, Sam climbed to his strange saddle, as did the rest, and a few minutes later the silent-pacing, long-legged animals were following their leader out of the court and into the lighted road, down which they stole on in the moonlight like strange creatures in a picture, pa.s.sing people, but taking no one's attention, while more than ever the whole scene appeared to the party like a portion of some dream.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE DESERT.

"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 p.r.i.c.kly 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 pa.s.sing 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 b.u.mp, 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."