y satisfying the senses might dull his mind. A love, in
fact, which, stronger than the wind of the hurricane, swifter than the
raging torrent, swept all before it.
The Arab's love for his camel is a love of gratitude, for does not the
Koran say, "And hath also provided you with tents and the skin of
cattle, which ye find light to be removed on the day of your departure,
and easy to be pitched on the day of your sitting down therein, and of
their wool, and their fur, and of their hair, hath he supplied you with
furniture and household stuff for a season." His love for his horse is
a love of delight in her beauty, and her endurance and her swiftness,
causing the master even at the point of death in battle to pour forth
the praises of his mare, and with his last breath call aloud her
pedigree to the lucky person, to whom she falls as booty.
But once let an Arab love a woman, with the love which has nothing to
do with the arranged marriage of his early youth, or his attraction to
some beautiful face which causes him to take the possessor thereof to
wife, of which Allah in his bounty allows him four, or his desire for
some one of his concubines, to the number of which there is no limit;
_then_ I say will the love of sons, love of beast, and thought for all
save his religion, go down before it as a young tree before the storm.
Hahmed the Arab loved the English girl with just such a love, also had
she been hurt through the brutish manners of the animal, who had been
expressly chosen for the honour of carrying her, therefore his love for
his camel had turned to seething hate, and when that happens in the
East, it is time to remove thyself, and that hastily.
Unfastening the lead from the pack camel, the man knotted it firmly to
the back of her flat saddle, which usually makes the foundation for the
animal's burden, then urging her to her feet led her in front of
Taffadaln, who, a little at sea as to the proceedings, was marking time
with her head. The same thing happened to the black animal, and then
with a swiftness which thoroughly befogged the small brain of all this
trouble, the leathered thong across her soft muzzle was tightened to
the verge of cruelty, and the reins twisted twice round the back of the
head, and then knotted to the leading reins fastened to the saddlebacks
of her two inferior sisters.
"Thus will I show thee who is master, O! shrew!" observed her master,
as he surveyed his handiwork. "Thou wilt
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