or fear she should run away.

And as soon as Spanish Dick had ridden off Shard sent some men to roll
all the barrels back from the depot where they were buried in the
sand, with orders to watch the cutter all the time and, if she
signalled, to return as fast as they could.

They buried the Arabs that day, removing their water-bottles and any
provisions they had, and that night they got all the water-barrels in,
and for days nothing happened. One event of extraordinary importance
did indeed occur, the wind got up one day, but it was due South, and
as the oasis lay to the North of them and beyond that they might pick
up the camel track Shard decided to stay where he was. If it had
looked to him like lasting Shard might have hoisted sail but it it
dropped at evening as he knew it would, and in any case it was not the
wind he wanted. And more days went by, two weeks without a breeze. The
dead oxen would not keep and they had had to kill three more, there
were only seven left now.

Never before had the men been so long without rum. And Captain Shard
had doubled the watch besides making two more men sleep at the guns.
They had tired of their simple games, and most of their songs, and
their tales that were never true were no longer new. And then one day
the monotony of the desert came down upon them.

There is a fascination in the Sahara, a day there is delightful, a
week is pleasant, a fortnight is a matter of opinion, but it was
running into months. The men were perfectly polite but the boatswain
wanted to know when Shard thought of moving on. It was an unreasonable
question to ask of the captain of any ship in a dead calm in a desert,
but Shard said he would set a course and let him know in a day or two.
And a day or two went by over the monotony of the Sahara, who for
monotony is unequalled by all the parts of the earth. Great marshes
cannot equal it, nor plains of grass nor the sea, the Sahara alone
lies unaltered by the seasons, she has no altering surface, no flowers
to fade or grow, year in year out she is changeless for hundreds and
hundreds of miles. And the boatswain came again and took off his cap
and asked Captain Shard to be so kind as to tell them about his new
course. Shard said he meant to stay until they had eaten three more of
the oxen as they could only take three of them in the hold, there were
only six left now. But what if there was no wind, the boatswain said.
And at that moment the faintest breeze