get the image of some
distinct object imprinted upon your retina, then you need but stare
again at some space of indistinct colouring and you will see the
impression of your distinct object reprinted a hundred times upside
down.

Who has not tried the experiment in their youth with the aid of the
ceiling and red-lettered advertisement of chocolate or soap, and later
in years upbraided the reflected blobs of sun which usually choose a
critical moment in which to obscure your vision when you have turned
your back upon the sunset.

Jack Wetherbourne distinctly saw the fleeing camel in front of him,
when he at last got his own to its feet, and being eager to keep his
quarry well within his vision, continued to stare and strain his eyes,
whilst he raced for hour after hour over mile after mile of sand, until
in the end he saw the fleeing camel ahead of him when in reality it was
well on its way back to Cairo; and continued, with eyes staring out of
a white, dust-covered face, to pursue the phantom until the first ray
of the sun hitting him fiercely, caused him to cover his eyes a while,
and after, to look about him with refreshed sight, which showed him in
the midst of the desert, alone, with a cloud of sand rising before the
wind some miles behind him--an infant sandstorm, but strong enough to
hide the distant peaks of the pyramids from him, and to send his
terrified, idiotic camel fleeing straight ahead through hours of
increasing heat, without a drop of water upon its foolish back or in
its master's pocket flask, until with a sudden silly chuckle the man
jerked the reins and tumbled headlong from the saddle, laughing
stupidly with sudden sunstroke.

CHAPTER XLI

The midday sun of the same day blazed down upon a picture which for
ghastliness surpassed even the horrors painted by the madman Werth,
which, if your mind is steeped in morbidness, you can see for a franc,
or for nothing, I really forget which, when next you visit Brussels.

Upon a hillock of sand, the summit of which continually trickled to the
base in fine golden streams, a little mound built with the aid of a
pair of pumps, sat Jack Wetherbourne, laughing sickeningly, just as he
had sat since the moment he had waved a delirious adieu to the quickly
disappearing camel. His dress coat, trousers, white waistcoat, shirt,
undergarments, socks and shoes, lay upon the sand arranged by the
disordered mind in the fantastic design of a scarecrow.

As I ha