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Updated: June 16, 2025
The caravan newly arrived consisted of eleven men, with eight camels and three Saaran horses. The men were all Arabs, none of them being slaves. They were well-armed, and carried no merchandise. They had lately come from the north-west, for what purpose Golah knew not, since the account the stranger sheik had given of himself was not satisfactory.
I believe there are a few who are fortunate enough to regain their liberty; but the majority of sailors cast away on the Saaran coast never have the good fortune to get away from it. They die under the hardships and ill-treatment to which they are exposed upon the desert, without leaving a trace of their existence any more than the dogs or camels belonging to their common masters.
Neither had Bill obtained any knowledge of it from books; but, for all that, thanks to many a forecastle yarn, the old sailor was well informed both about the character of the coast on which they had suffered shipwreck, and its inhabitants. Bill had the best of reasons for dreading the denizens of the Saaran desert. "Sure they're not cannibals?" urged Terence. "They won't eat us, anyhow?"
As it chanced, the Saaran wreckers saw nothing of all this; and as the splashing sounds, which otherwise might have reached them, were drowned by the louder sough of the sea, they returned toward their encampment in a state of perplexity bordering upon bewilderment.
After leaving the coast, the travellers kept at a quick pace, and Sailor Bill and his brother had but little opportunity of holding converse together. When the douar had been pitched for the night, the old salt and the "young gentlemen", his companions, gathered around the man whose experience in the miseries of Saaran slavery so far exceeded their own.
Their behaviour increased the ardour of the salvers in the pursuit in which the were engaged, along with the envy of the rival party; who, by the laws of the Saaran coast, were not allowed to participate in their toil.
Notwithstanding that Golah's brother-in-law, who had formerly been a freeman, was now a slave, he seemed well satisfied with the change in his circumstances. He made himself very useful to his new masters in looking after the camel, and doing all the other necessary work, which his knowledge of Saaran life enabled him effectually to execute.
Looking up the smooth strand, as far as the eye could reach, and down it to a like distance, there was no place where a crab could have screened itself; and these Saaran wreckers, well acquainted with the coast, knew that in neither direction was there any other ravine or gully into which the fugitives could have retreated. No wonder then that the pursuers wondered, even to speechlessness.
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