"Beg pardon, Mr Frank," whispered Sam, coming close to his side. "Am I to ride one of them long-legged things?" "Yes, of course. You're not afraid?" "Afraid, sir? Not me. I've rid most everything, and I meant to have gone up to the Zoo for a lesson in camels, only there warn't time. I'm not afraid, and I'm going to do it, but I do begin to feel as if I ought to be tied on." However, Sam climbed to his strange saddle, as did the rest, and a few minutes later the silent-pacing, long-legged animals were following their leader out of the court and into the lighted road, down which they stole on in the moonlight like strange creatures in a picture, passing people, but taking no one's attention, while more than ever the whole scene appeared to the party like a portion of some dream. CHAPTER EIGHT. THE DESERT. "How are you getting on, Sam?" said Frank, after they had progressed about a mile, during which the outskirts of the city had given place to garden, cultivated field, trees dotted here and there, and then hedges which looked weird, ghastly, and strange in the moonlight, being composed of those fleshy, nightmare-looking plants of cactus growth, the prickly pears, with their horrible thorns, while more and more the way in front began to spread out wild, desolate and strange in the soft, misty, silvery grey of the moonlight, through which the long-legged animals stalked, casting weird shadows upon the soft, sandy road, and save for one thing the passing of the little train would have been in an oppressive silence, for the spongy feet of the birdlike animals rose and fell without a sound. "How'm I getting on, sir?" was the reply. "Well, about as bad as a man can. Look at me, sir; there I am. That's my shadder. I don't know what our servants at home would say to see me going along over the sand this how. Look at my shadder, sir; looks like a monkey a-top of a long-legged shed." "The shadows do look strange, Sam." "Strange, sir? They _look_ horrid. Just like so many ghosts out for a holiday, and it's us. And look at what makes the shadders. They look creepy in the moonshine. Why, if we was out on a country road now in dear old England, and the police on duty saw us we should give 'em fits." "Rather startling, certainly," said Frank. "It does look a weird procession." "Seems a mad sort of a set out altogether, sir: three British gentlemen and a respectable servant going out for a ride in the night in a place like this a-top of these excruciating animals, along with so many silent blacks dressed in long white sheets. It all seems mad to me, sir, and as if we ought to be in bed. I fancy I am sometimes, and having uncomfortable dreams, like one does after cold boiled beef for supper, and keep expecting to wake up with a pain in the chest. But I don't, for there we are sneaking along in this silent way with our tall shadders seeming to watch us. Ugh! It's just as if we were going to do something wicked somewhere."