less than a pint of sour milk to each, half of which was water--the
mixture denominated _cheni_.

Could this meal be meant for breakfast? Harry Blount and Terence thought
not. But Colin corrected them, by alleging that it was. He had read of
the wonderful abstemiousness of these children of the desert: how they
can live on a single meal a day, and this scarce sufficient to sustain
life in a child of six years old; that is, an English child. Often will
they go for several successive days without eating and when they do eat
regularly, a drink of milk is all they require to satisfy hunger.

Colin was right. It was their ordinary breakfast. He might have added,
their dinner too, for they would not likely obtain another morsel of
food before sundown.

But where was the breakfast of Colin and his fellow-captives? This was
the question that interested them far more than the dietary of the
Bedouins. They were all hungering like hyenas, and yet no one seemed to
think of them--no one offered them either bite or sup. Filthy as was the
mess made by the Arab women, and filthily as they prepared it,--boiling
it in pots, and serving it up in wooden dishes, that did not appear to
have had a washing for weeks,--the sight of it increased the hungry
cravings of the captives; and they would fain have been permitted to
share the scanty _dejeuner_.

They made signs of their desire; piteous appeals for food, by looks and
gestures; but all in vain: not a morsel was bestowed on them. Their
brutal captors only laughed at them, as though they intended that all
four should go without eating.

It soon became clear that they were not to starve in idleness. As soon
as they had been started to their feet each of them was set to a task;
one to collect camels' dung for the cooking fires; another to fetch
water from the brackish muddy pool which had caused the oasis to become
a place of encampment; while the third was called upon to assist in the
loading of the tent equipage, along with the salvage of the wreck,--an
operation entered upon as soon as the sangleh had been swallowed.

Sailor Bill, in a different part of the douar, was kept equally upon the
alert: and if he, or any of the other three, showed signs of disliking
their respective tasks, one of the two sheiks made little ado about
striking them with a leathern strap, a knotty stick, or any weapon that
chanced to come readiest to hand. They soon discovered that they were
under the governme