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laudable curiosity-laudable as an item of mental experience to know "how it would seem" to shoot a man.

I suppose that is the extent of the wish for adventure in prosecuting the desert journey. For the first time in your life-if you have escaped highway robbery-you find yourself in circumstances that may very easily and naturally compel you to the act, and the moment such a thing becomes possible or even probable, the speculation ripens into desire, and you scan the horizon impatiently for the cloud of dust, and the onslaught of murderous Arabs.

The reality would sadly chill the romance. To encounter an enemy in the lonely mid-desert, an enemy whose force would be in numbers, with whom the excitement of fighting would be only the despair of a cornered tiger-whom you could not feel to be the "peers," with whom battle of any kind is a delight, but beasts only, and serpents, and dumb forms of fate; and in the end to leave your bones to bleach on the lonely mid-desert,-how does that look on the pages of books by warm fires? It is an unmitigated tragedy.

Tragical enough, and in the same kind, was the fate of the young English and French officers who perished in our early Indian wars. They fell without the glorious consciousness of equal foes. Yet even these men, although bereaved of the glory of honorable battle, snared and circumvented by savages, fought for their country, and their country remembers them.

The aspects of a desert combat thus sweep over your mind, as you meditate them upon MacWhirter. But on

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the whole, you wish you might try it. For after all, how many of the Syrian travellers who have fought, were injured? Yet many of them knew until their last day, "how it seems" to shoot a man.

Besides, it is not very serious business. Many a desert camp of Howadji has been startled by the shrill cry of "Bedoueen, Bedoueen,” and springing up amid the darkness and confusion, and popping and flashing of guns and pistols, there was all the dismay of a surprised army, with vague, bitter thoughts of home and of vultures nibbling carrion upon the sands, and all the panorama of past joys and future woe was revealed by one such moment, as all the East and West by a lightning flash at midnight. But the fierce tumult died away into some stealthy old fellow trying to steal a chicken.

These things you remember, and wish the Arabs would ride up. You are vexed to pass unscathed across the wilderness, when Perkyn Pastor and his friend were besieged by Bedoueen in a tomb at Petra for a whole day, blazing away at them from the barricaded door, and with only a barrel of porter for rations. Pastor is a man who has had experiences-you reflect, with chagrin. Pastor can thrill any civilized saloon by commencing carelessly, "When I was besieged by Bedoueen, in a tomb at Petra-"

What have you to say for yourself, you eventless Howadji, whose only adventure up to this moment is ignominiously tumbling off MacWhirter at the instant of starting?

-Softly, softly, good my friends!-When I saw the

seven Arabs with spears and matchlocks coming slowly toward us.

-What! have you had adventures? Come, Dick, wake up! Billy Kirby's going to die!

XVI.

Araa Viramque Cano.

THE next morning the venerable Armenian halted in a grove of palms, and waited until we came up. We found a strange man in fierce altercation with him.

"He insists upon having the camel," said the Armenian.

It was a grim Bedoueen, and he clung to the halter of the disputed beast with inexorable tenacity.

"By what right?" inquired the Howadji.

"He says he sold it eight years ago to the Armenian's Shekh, for six hundred piastres, and not a para has yet been paid, so he will take the camel," explained Golden Sleeve, between his morning whiffs.

"And this was the reason the Shekh would not come farther than El Harish?"

"Probably, gentlemen."

"Well?"

"Well, he must not take him," said the Commander, with the air of the "Lord of three seas."

The old Armenian was evidently sadly perplexed. He rode up and down on his docile little white mare,

and shot off volleys of mild oaths at the grim Bedoueen, with the air of a city merchant stopped on the road with his family, who deems it incumbent upon him to be brave and chivalrous, but who would be very sorry to provoke unpleasant consequences.

"Oh! Kooltooluk! (oh! thunder!) let the camel go!" said he, from a little distance, to the Bedoueen; "we.. can't stop here."

The grim Bedoueen grasped the halter more firmly, and broke out into shrill objurgations and threats.

Khadra looked placidly out of her nest, as if life and its chances were but a play, to be enjoyed from a palanquin.

I turned MacWhirter toward the mother, and suggested very slowly and distinctly, "Mi rincresce molto, Signora," (I am very sorry for all this, madam.)

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Si, non capisco, Signore," (yes, Sir, I don't understand,) blandly retorted the lady, and I turned MacWhirter back again.

There was a tumultuous quarrel after this, during which I rode forward and awaited the result. The caravan presently followed, and the Pacha told me that the Bedoueen had retired into the desert, announcing his intention of returning with seven other devils worse than himself, and of capturing the camel, if necessary, by force of arms.

By force of arms? Here was "worshipful intelligence." Here was the gauntlet deliberately thrown down. by the "wild tribes of the desert."

By force of arms? And I reflected with excusable

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