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Frank's eyes were already noting that to which the Sheikh drew his attention, for a party of about a dozen unhappy fellaheen, joined together by a long chain, which in several cases had fretted their black skins into open sores, were being driven along by a Baggara mounted upon a slight, swift-looking camel, from whose high back he wielded a long-lashed whip, and flicked with it from time to time at the bare skin of one of the slaves who cringed along looking ready to drop.
As it proved in a short time after colours had been hoisted, those of the French brig being raised upon a spare spar, the stranger came steadily on in the most peaceable way till the tide had carried her within reasonable distance of the schooner's anchorage, when an order rang out, an anchor was lowered with a splash, and as she swung slowly round, a light boat was dropped from the davits, and a swarthy-looking Spaniard, who seemed to be an officer if not the skipper of the swift-looking raking craft, had himself rowed alongside the schooner.
After examining them, long and swift-looking, with no more space between decks than is needed for machinery, stores, armament, and lung-play for live men, the inevitable reflection recurs that the advance of mechanical power must color our dreams of romance in future. Surely the old ways are gone.
"Should you think these are pirates?" said Mark, pointing towards one particularly swift-looking prau just gliding out of the harbour. "Very likely," said the second-mate. "They are traders and fishermen, and sometimes all's fish that comes to their net. Not very formidable looking enemies, though." "They've no guns," said Mark, looking rather contemptuously at the quaint craft.
In this attitude he was no longer clumsy, but trim and swift-looking. Beneath the bases of the tentacles, on the under side of the body, a sort of valve opened spasmodically and took in a huge gulp of water, which was at once ejected with great force through a tube among the tentacles.
The place interested Frank for reasons he could not have explained, and he would gladly have sat watching what was going on; but it was evidently the dwelling of some powerful dervish Emir, and his companion rode up to one of the armed men seated upon a slightly built, swift-looking camel.
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