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It was rather a bad commencement of a forced march, and the ravine we had crossed had been a cause of serious delay. Hardly were the animals reloaded and again ready for the march, when the men remembered that they had only one waterskin full. I had given orders before the start from Belignan that all should be filled.
He will do his best, but as he said to me an hour ago, the success of our adventure must be left to fate." "But our preparations seem so small," said Frank uneasily. "Preparations for desert journeys are small from an Englishman's point of view. A man here takes his camel, a bag of meal and another of dates, with a waterskin to fill when it is more than a day's journey to the next well.
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.
The first thing his eye lit on was a bulky object hanging against the side, and covered with a thick black blanket of Arab manufacture. Lifting this, he saw, as he expected, that the object beneath it was a large waterskin well filled; the blanket had evidently been placed over it to keep it cool when the sun streamed down on the deck above it.
Then at the foot of the pole he scraped a little hole in the earth and placed the bits of skin there, and covered them up. Then he gave me to drink from a buffalo paunch waterskin that he had brought. "Now, my son," said he, "you shall sleep here this night, and to-morrow morning, as the sun rises, leave this; hill, and everything on it, as it is, and return to the camp.
So I watched them and observed, in one of the companies, a youth wasted with sickness, as he were a worn-out dried-up waterskin. And as I looked on him, lo! he repeated these couplets, 'What ails the Beauty she returneth not? * Is't Beauty's irk or grudging to my lot? I sickened and my friends all came to call; * What stayed thee calling with the friendly knot?
It was in fact the "Gerba", or waterskin, belonging to whoever had been the owner of the animal an article of camel equipment more essential than the saddle itself.
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