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Updated: June 16, 2025
The birds seemed to have a favorite roosting-place not far away, and from time to time the tremulous sound of their calling drifted through space. Just how long he slept Frank did not exactly know. He awoke with a sneeze, and sat up, rubbing his eyes. "What's the matter?" exclaimed Jerry, also starting out of a sound sleep. "I don't know why, the tent's full of smoke! The camp must be on fire!
"I hope the pegs hold," shouted Hubbard, and we waited while the tent-sides strained and the pole wavered. The dog growled, and a scuffling behind us was followed by the appearance, at the back of the tent, of the colonel's head and shoulders. In his pyjamas, drenched and shivering with cold, he struggled inside. "My tent's down," he called sharply.
But for never any speech these three noble earls would abide, ere they came riding before the tent's door, wherein was the emperor. Down they gan alight, and delivered their steeds; and so they weaponed with all advanced into the tent, before the emperor that Luces was named.
A long torch stood in front of it with the point stuck in the ground. The floating yellow blaze showed the tent's interior, its simple fittings for rest, the magnificent arms and garments of its occupant, and first of all, D'Aulnay de Charnisay himself, sitting with a rude camp table in front of him. He was half muffled in a furred cloak from the balm of that Easter night.
Guess I'll have to look for a pine-knot and get a light." "They'd hear you chopping," said the man who had appeared first. "The tent's just back there among the firs. We have got to have that post shifted before they know we are about." There was no doubt as to who it was that he referred to, and Devine saw Saunders hitch himself forward a little.
The brutal, coarse, impure life of the Rectangle stirred itself into new life as the song, as pure as the surroundings were vile, floated out and into saloon and den and foul lodging. Some one stumbled hastily by Alexander Powers and said in answer to a question: "De tent's beginning to run over tonight. That's what the talent calls music, eh?"
A man was eating beside him; a woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles. Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three stones.
He led her like a dog in a leash to the tent, and tied the other end of the string to the scull, which was the tent's main prop and support. "Now," said he, "if you be gettin' up and walkin' about in the night, it's down the tint will be on top of us all." And, sure enough, in the small hours of the morning, it was. "I don't want my old britches on! I don't want my old britches on!"
"What are you going to suggest? Hire a snake-charmer and a wild-man-from-Borneo and an infant pachyderm and a royal ring-tailed gyasticutus, and pull off a side-show after the main tent's closed?" "Oh, Henry! Can't you see what a lark it would be?" "Lark?" he repeated, hazily. "Lark? You've got the wrong bird. It's crow." "No, but Henry dear, you aren't going to be a quitter, are you?"
Abdullah untwined his turban, loosened his sash, felt something escape him, fell on his knees, groped, felt a paper, rose, went to the tent's door, recognized the invoice which the old man had given him, went out, kicked up the embers of the fire, knelt, saw that the paper was unsealed, was fastened merely with a thread, played with the thread, saw it part beneath his fingers, saw the page unfold, stirred up the embers, and read: "To Mirza, Mother of the Dancers at Biskra, by the hand of Abdullah.
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