"Well, I feel very doubtful about the table, Sam; but I can't help thinking that I could write a good deal more clearly lying on the sand with the paper on a box or a biscuit-tin." "Yes, sir, I feel sure it would be better to wait now, and I'll risk it." "Risk what--the writing?" "No, sir; holding out till we get to the tents. Seems as if we shall get there a bit sooner than I thought for." "Oh, yes! we shall be there in less than half an hour." "Soon as that, sir?" "Yes." "Think I can hold out till then?" "If you try very hard, Sam," said Frank seriously. "You seem terribly knocked up; but I feel in hope that a good breakfast and a few hours' sleep will do you a lot of good, and then if the doctor takes you in hand, you will feel a different man by to-morrow." "To-morrow, sir? Think I shall ever see to-morrow?" "I hope so. Ah, here's the man from the tents! What a good-looking young Arab he seems, and what a clean-limbed, swift camel he is on--a beauty!" "Ugh! Don't say that, sir. They seem to me the most unnatural-looking, big, birdy creatures I ever set eyes on; and oh, Mr Frank! do you think it's possible for a man to get to ride them and like it?" "Look at that fellow," said Frank; "he seems as if he were part of the beast he rides." "P'r'aps he is, sir; being a native." "Oh, come, Sam, you're getting better," cried Frank cheerily. "Look, there's a fire outside that tent--two fires. That means cooking, and cooking means breakfast. I feel as if I shall be ready for some after all. Look at the place here." Sam began to grow interested, for they were approaching an oasis of some two or three hundred acres in extent, where, consequent upon the welling up of a spring of water at the foot of a clump of rocks, a few dom and date palms rose up gracefully, and the ground was covered pretty liberally with closely nibbled-off herbage, and dotted with sheep and goats, a few camels lying about here and there close to the group of booth-like tents, while for three or four hundred yards the course of the flowing water which rose from the spring could be clearly traced, by the richness of the plants and shrubs which owed their existence to its presence.