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Another sporting event took place here a racing camel, ridden by its Bedouin owner, was backed to beat any one of our officers' horses over a six-mile course, of which the first half lay along the canal bank, the last half over the desert which was pretty heavy going. After the first mile and a half the camel was leading by some 600 yards.
"I have been more with them, Rupert; besides, I had picked up a little in the year I was at Cairo. You see I had nearly four months start of you, and in the life I led among them of course I had a lot more occasion to talk than you have had, always on camel back and only talking in the encampment at night.
At length stupor overcame my senses, and I slept; while my camel quitted the track, and wandered from the route I had meant to pursue all night. Suddenly my head was violently intercepted by the branch of a tree, and I was awakened by the blow, which gave me infinite pain.
The Beduin, immediately supposing that they lived together in a criminal manner, fell upon my brother in a rage, and after he had mangled him in a barbarous manner, he carried him on a camel to the top of a desert mountain, where he left him. The mountain was on the way to Bagdad, so that the passengers who passed that road gave me an account of the place where he was.
A lucky circumstance, and this only, hindered the young Irishman from being carried to the Arab encampment: a circumstance very similar to that which on the preceding night had led to the capture of that same camel. Its halter was again trailing.
The prisoner had his arms freed, and was given another camel, as he seemed quiet and philosophical, and had a couple of friendly natives for companions to pump him. And the convoy went on its slow and painful journey. Assured by the other Arabs that no harm would be done him, the captured man became cheerful and communicative.
Happily, this chivalrous feat of friendship was in some degree its own reward. Those who sit at home blindfolded by self-conceit, and think camel or man out of the depths of their inner consciousness, alias their ignorance, will tell you that in the intervals of war and danger, peace and tranquil life acquire their true value and satisfy the heroic mind.
'Uncle Jacques, you informed us, 'is a delightful survival, bearing a really remarkable resemblance to a camel. Excepting his weakness for classic statuary and studies in the nude, his life is of Mayflower purity. He made his fortune on the Baltic Exchange, was knighted owing to a clerical error, and built the appalling church at Mid Hatton." Paul laughed boyishly.
Favoretta thought her brother looked too long at the hunchbacked camel; he accused her of turning over leaves before she had half seen the prints; but she listened not to his just reproaches, for she had caught a glimpse of the royal tiger springing upon Mr. Munro, and she could no longer restrain her impatience.
Such was the skill of these tribesmen that only one camel and one mule were drowned during the operation. The passage was completed on the 16th, and the next day the advance was resumed along the west bank of the Atbara.
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