Our poor servants! The dragoman and his crew, who tended the horses and looked after the baggage, were the picture of misery; the very horses hung down their heads, dejected and dispirited; and so we went on until we were about half a day’s journey from Damascus, when we met a damp and sympathetic native, who gave us directions as to a route by which we should save some distance, and the baggage would join us a little later. Alas! We took his advice and the proverbial short cut. We lost our way, the light began to fail, and we wandered on and on in darkness, our jaded horses stumbling at every other step over what seemed to be a barren, stony desert. There was nothing for it but to dismount and lead them. We had no food, and the dragoman was in despair. At last, when it was near midnight, we heard the baying of dogs in the distance. There was a ray of hope—where there were dogs there would be men of some sort. Worn out with fatigue and hunger, we struggled on till we came upon the black tents of a Bedouin camp. We had heard ugly stories of the tribes to the east of Jordan, but they must have been set about by the Father of Lies. Nothing could have been kinder than these nomad Arabs. Even the dogs, which sniffed about our legs a little suspiciously at first, ended by being quite friendly. The Sheik gave us shelter in one of his tents, and told off three or four of his young men to tend our horses, while he fetched us milk and a sort of damper. Utterly worn out, we lay down in our sopping clothes on a comfortable litter of dry straw, and in a moment were fast asleep. How soon I know not, I was awakened by something warm and soft and wet snuggling against my cheek—it was the nose of a calf, two days old, which with its mother shared our quarters, or rather, I should say, we shared theirs, for we, not they, were the intruders. When daylight came we were the objects of much curiosity: from the Sheik’s own tent there were great whisperings and peepings of his womankind. Doubtless our dragoman, after the manner of his guild, had spent all the wealth of Eastern hyperbole in reciting our magnitudes, with which his audience must have felt that our sorry plight was hardly in harmony. With much gratitude we took leave of the good Sheik, and set out again through the pitiless rain into the wilderness. Like primitive wanderers we travelled on, trusting to luck; for many miles we rode through the desolation, without meeting a soul from whom we could gain information.