as
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 camel's 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 government of taskmasters not to be trifled with, and
that resistance or remonstrance would be alike futile. In short, they
saw that they were slaves!

While packing the tents, and otherwise preparing for the march, they
were witnesses to many customs, curious as new to them. The odd
equipages of the animals, both those of burden and those intended to be
ridden; the oval panniers, placed upon the backs of the camels, to carry
the women and the younger children; the square pads upon the humps of
the maherries; the tawny little piccaninnies strapped upon the backs of
their mothers; the kneeling of the camels to receive their loads, as if
consenting to what could not be otherwise than disagreeable to them,
were all sights that might have greatly interested our adventurers, had
they been viewing them under different circumstances.

Out of the last mentioned of these sights, an incident arose,
illustrating the craft of their captors in the management of their
domestic animals.

A refractory camel, that, according to usual habi