“The worst of it all was that the whole village began to suffer from catalepsy as Dads said, and then it all got into the newspapers, and occult societies camped at the gates, water diviners drilled on the lawns, the Merry Harvester was filled with ’ologists hailing from this country, and some genuine catamaniacs, until I had the bright idea of fastening a placard on the gates to say that the cat was dead, though she had suddenly disappeared the night the picture of the ancestress fell, owing honestly to a faulty plug in the wall.  Now! let me try and see if my knowledge of the Arabian tongue is good enough to be understood by the camel.”

Lowering her voice a tone, she suddenly cried “Get up!”

Whereupon the animal rose clumsily to its feet, as the girl, laughing aloud, clung to the man’s arm.

“Oh,” she cried, “did you ever know anything so funny, though why, I am sure I can’t say—­fancy a camel obeying me.”

“Get down!” she suddenly ordered in her sweet, broken Arabic, at which the camel knelt, leaving the Arab astounded, for the beautiful, lazy woman of the East troubles not her soul in the training of beasts, nor has she any command over them.

Having mounted and got the three animals to their feet, Jill laughed delightedly, announcing her intention of starting the trio and leading them for a short space, to which the man, craving to satisfy the slightest wish, consented, fastening the pack camel to the off-side of Jill’s beast, so that she should be in the middle, upon which they started off triumphantly, leaving the tent to the stars and moon.

For an hour they travelled over the sand, covered in patches with low shrubs, and broken here and there by sand dunes, until Jill suddenly stopped her chattering and pointed.

“There’s a caravan or something over there, and we seem to be heading straight for it—­it’s—­yes—­it’s a tent under some palms—­why!  Yes—­no! yes it is—­oh, it’s our tent—­how can it be our tent when we have been going straight ahead all the time, haven’t we?”

Without the glimmer of a smile, the Arab shook his head.

“We have been describing a circle ever since we started.”

“But no!” argued the girl, who was half mortified, half ready to laugh,
“there is no left rein, and I left the right one hanging------”

“Yes, but quite unconsciously you kicked your camel with your left foot when we were some way from the tent—­you didn’t notice, but she immediately began to turn to the left; after that, you patted her continually on the left side, and camels, who, from pure stupidity or hereditary instinct, will go straight on to eternity untouched, are trained to turn in the direction of the side touched by hand, foot, or whip; the single rein is of very little use, and hardly ever used by a native, for once a camel bolts, nothing will stop him, excepting a cloth flung over his head, or the birth of some passing fancy in