y
the rich milk had to some extent taken the keen edge off their
appetites; and all declared they could now go several hours without
eating.

The next question was: where were they to go?

The reader may wonder that this was a question at all. Having been told
that the camel carried a saddle, and was otherwise caparisoned, it will
naturally be conjectured that the animal had got loose from some owner,
and was simply straying. This was the very hypothesis that passed
before the mind of our adventurers. How could they have conjectured
otherwise?

Indeed it was scarce a guess. The circumstances told them to a
certainty that the camel must have strayed from its owner. The only
question was, where that owner might be found.

By reading, or otherwise, they possessed enough knowledge of the coast
on which they had been cast away to know that the proprietor of the
"stray" would be some kind of an Arab; and that he would be found
living, not in a house or a town, but in a tent; in all likelihood
associated with a number of other Arabs in an "encampment."

It required not much reasoning to arrive at these conclusions, and our
adventurers had come to them almost on that instant when they first set
eyes on the caparisoned camel.

You may wonder that they did not instantly set forth in search of the
master of the maherry; or of the tent or encampment from which the
latter should have strayed. One might suppose that this would have been
their first movement.

On the contrary, it was likely to be their very last; and for sufficient
reasons which will be discovered in the conversation that ensued after
they had swallowed their liquid breakfasts.

Terence had proposed adopting this course, that is, to go in search of
the man from whom the maherry must have wandered. The young Irishman
had never been a great reader, at all events no account of the many
"lamentable shipwrecks on the Barbary coast" had ever fallen into his
hands, and he knew nothing of the terrible reputation of its people.
Neither had Bill obtained any knowledge of it from books; but, for all
that, thanks to many a forecastle yarn, the old sailor was well informed
both about the character of the coast on which they had suffered
shipwreck, and its inhabitants. Bill had the best of reasons for
dreading the denizens of the Saaran desert.

"Sure they're not cannibals?" urged Terence. "They won't eat us,
anyhow?"

"In troth I'm not so shure av that, Mast