The beasts the dervishes ride!  What had these dead dervishes ridden?  In an instant he was clambering up the rocks, with Abbas protesting at his heels.  Had the two fugitives carried away all the camels, or had they been content to save themselves?  The brass gleam from a litter of empty Remington cases caught his eye, and showed where the enemy had been crouching.  And then he could have shouted for joy, for there, in the hollow, some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck and the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon before—­a swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy baggles as the cart-horse is from the racer.

The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered Arab fashion with a rope around the knees.  Anerley threw his leg over the front pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord.  Forward flew Anerley towards the creature’s neck, then violently backwards, clawing madly at anything which might save him, and then, with a jerk which nearly snapped his loins, he was thrown forward again.  But the camel was on its legs now, and the young pressman was safely seated upon one of the fliers of the desert.  It was as gentle as it was swift, and it stood oscillating its long neck and gazing round with its large brown eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the peg and grasped the curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him.  There were two bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck, but he remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant’s and not the house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the lower.  Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an instant Abbas’ farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the black rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.

It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the motion, although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant.  Having no stirrup or fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he gripped as tightly as be could with his knee, and he tried to sway backwards and forwards as he had seen the Arabs do.  It was a large, very concave Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing about on it with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a tea-tray.  He gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself steady.  The creature had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot, its sponge-like feet making no sound upon the hard sand.  Anerley leaned back with his two hands gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the creature on.  The sun had already sunk behind the line of black volcanic peaks, which look like huge slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine.  The western sky had taken that lovely light green and pale pink tint which makes evening beautiful upon the Nile, and the old brown river itself, swirling down amongst the black rocks, caught some shimmer of the colours above.  The glare, the heat, and the piping of the insects had all ceased together.  In spite of his aching head, Anerley could have cried out for pure physical joy as the swift creature beneath him flew along with him through that cool, invigorating air, with the virile north wind soothing his pringling face.