isk bushes.

It was a grey and windless day, and the sky looked much lower than it
usually does in Egypt. The atmosphere was sad. Clouds of wild pigeons
flew up to right and left of them, circling over the now diminishing
crops and the little runlets of water that soon would die away where
sterility's empire began. In low, yet penetrating, voices the camel men
sang the songs of the sands, as they ran on, treading softly with naked
feet. Hamza, who accompanied the little caravan with his donkey in case
Mrs. Armine grew tired of her camel, holding his hieratic wand, kept
always softly and unweariedly behind them.

And thus, always accompanied by the hum and the twittering of a
melancholy music, they went on towards the lake.

Upon Nigel's beast were slung his guns. He was eagerly looking forward
to his holiday. He had been toiling really hard with his fellahin, often
almost up to his knees in mud and water, driving the sand-plough,
working the small and primitive engines, digging, planting, even
following the hand-plough drawn by a camel yoked to a donkey. He was in
grand condition, hard as nails, burnt by the sun, joyful with the almost
careless joy that is born of a health made perfect by labour. The
desolation before them to him seemed a land of promise, for he was
entering it with Ruby, and in it there were thousands of wild duck, and
jackals that slunk out by night among the stunted tamarisk bushes.

"We seem to be going to the end of the world," she said.

She was swaying gently to and fro with the movement of her camel, which
had just turned to the right, after following for an immense time a
straight track that was cut through the crops, and that never deviated
to right or left. Now sand appeared. On their left, and parallel to
them, crept a sluggish stream of water between uneven banks of sand. And
the track was up and down, and here and there showed humps, and deep
ruts, and sometimes holes. The crops began to be sparser; no more houses
or huts were visible; but far away in the white and wintry distance,
looking almost like discolourations upon a sheet, were scattered low
brown and black tents, which seemed to be crouching on the desolate
ground.

"Does any one live out here beyond us?" she added. "Are those things
really tents?"

"Yes, Ruby."

"It seems incredible that any human beings should deliberately choose to
live here."

"You haven't ever felt the call of the wild?" he asked.

She looked at