THE DESERT CAPITAL
visible to us, but our guide held steadily on through the darkness. During the long night we could see ahead of us his white camel, keeping straight on the course with no apparent aid save the twinkling stars above. There was such danger of falling in with one of the robber tribes which infest this district that we were warned not to speak above a whisper. The poor donkeys also received a hint not to bray. Each of them had a halter looped tightly around his neck. As soon as an animal was seen to raise his nose in preparation for an ecstatic song, some one would quickly tighten the noose and, to our amusement and the donkey's very evident disgust, the only sound to issue from his throat would be a thin gurgling whine.
As the night drew on we became so sleepy that we could hardly sit in the saddles, and before morning dawned we were burning with thirst. Our guide led us to another spring. Not only was it full of long-dead locusts, but a wild pig was wallowing in the filthy water! Even the Arabs refused to drink from the pool that had been defiled by the unclean beast. There was nothing to do but to push on again. We had been twenty-six hours in the saddle, with nothing to drink save "locust-tea," when at last we came to a little village by a running stream of clear, limpid water—and our desert journey was safely over.
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