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For more than three hours he sat thus, and then awoke to the fact that the night was cold and the hour late. Drawing his bernous tightly round him he descended into the city, which was now for the most part wrapped in sleep. He was passing through the native quarter when a door opened and several men came out.
An Afghan bernous was thrown back from his head and shoulders, while his commanding figure was draped in a long chibuok. A pair of pistols and a curved yasmak were in his belt. "So you got to Wazuchistan all right," said the Premier quietly. "I went in by way of the Barooda," said Powers. "For many days I was unable to cross it. The waters of the river were wild and swollen with rains.
The two men drew near, and having dismounted, turned the poor thing over, and feeling the faint beating of the heart, with no more ado than if they were setting down to food, undid one of the goatskins from the nearest camel, and soaking the flowing bernous until it dripped with the precious water, wrapped the body in its folds; and collecting the gold watch, money and card-case strewn upon the sands, slipped everything back into a waistcoat pocket with the exception of a three day old programme announcing a cotillion at Shepherd's Hotel, a sketch of which hideous building was elaborately and mendaciously reproduced on the cover, so that to the mind of uneducated Yussuf, unversed in the English tongue, there was but one thing to do, and that to go straight to the well-known caravanserai with his burden, and deliver it safely into the proprietor's hands.
Near them were a body of Garamantes, wrapped in the long bernous which then as now was the garb of the children of the desert. Tall, swarthy figures these, lissome and agile, with every muscle standing out clear through the brown skin. Strange as must have been the scene to them, there was no wonder expressed in the keen glances which they shot around them from underneath their dark eyebrows.
Malchus slept little that night, and rejoiced when he again saw Nessus descending the steps. A few strokes of his paddle sent the raft alongside. Nessus fastened a cord to it to prevent it from drifting away. "We may need it again," he said briefly. Malchus placed his own clothes upon it and threw over his shoulders the bernous which Nessus had brought.
Enveloped in a bernous, his head covered with the straight chechia of the Spahis, a great chaplet of alternate red and white beads, ending in a cross, around his neck, he realized perfectly the ideal of Father Lavigerie's White Fathers. After a two-days' halt at Temassinin we had just left the road followed by Flatters, and taken an oblique course to the south.
Every night when I lay down on the hard planks of the deck I have consoled myself with the thought that a soft bed awaited me here; and now we have to take at once to the bare ground, with nothing but this skin strapped on the pommel of my saddle to sleep on, and my bernous to cover me.
But the population were even more amusing, with the mixture of Egyptians, Arabs, and Negroes clad in every variety of garb: from the Egyptian functionary in his neat blue uniform and fez, and the portly merchant in his oriental robes, to the Arabs muffled up in cotton cloths with turban and bernous, the lightly-clad Fellah, and the women shrouded in dark blue cottons with their faces almost entirely hidden by the yashmack.
The Arab was an old hunter, and he now asked Malchus to take his place with the bow while he drove the bear out. He first took off his bernous, cut off several strips from the bottom, knotted them together, and then twisted the strip into a rope.
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