the sun; and years of continual practice had no doubt
inured them to the endurance of hunger and thirst to a surprising
degree. To their white fellow-captives they appeared more like huge
reptiles than human beings.

The sand along the route on this, the second day, was less compact than
before, and the task of leg-lifting produced a weariness such as might
have arisen from the hardest work. Added to the agony of their thirst,
the white sufferers dwelt frequently on thoughts of death, that great
antidote to human miseries; yet so constrained were their actions by
force of circumstances, that only by following their leader and owner,
Golah, could they hope to find relief.

Had he allowed them to turn back to the coast, whence they had started,
or even to repose for a few hours on the way, they could not have done
so. They were irresistibly compelled to move on, by a power that could
not be resisted.

That power was hope, the hope of obtaining some sangleh and a little
dirty water.

To turn back, or to linger behind, would bring them nothing but more
suffering, perhaps death itself.

A man intent on dying may throw himself into the water to get drowned,
and then find himself involuntarily struggling to escape from the death
he has courted.

The same irresistible antipathy to death compelled his white captives to
follow the black sheik.

They were unwilling to die, not for the sole reason that they had homes
and friends they wished to see again, not solely for that innate love of
life, implanted by nature in the breasts of all; but there was a
pleasure which they desired to experience once more, ay, yearned to
indulge in it: the pleasure of quenching their terrible thirst. To
gratify this pleasure they must follow Golah.

One of Golah's wives had three children; and as each wife was obliged to
look after her own offspring, this woman could not pursue her journey
without a little more trouble than her less favoured companions.

The eldest of her children was too young to walk a long distance; and,
most of the time, was carried under her care upon the maherry. Having
her three restless imps to keep balanced upon the back of the camel,
requiring her constant vigilance to prevent them from falling off, she
found her hands full enough. It was a sort of travelling that did not
at all suit her; and she had been casting about for some way of being
relieved from at least a portion of her trouble.

The plan she d