After Rashid had thanked his kind little friends, there was great fun stowing the presents away so that they might be carried safely, especially the shell of one of the ostrich's eggs which Awad had brought him. Finally Fatimah found a place for this last gift by putting it in a palm-leaf basket and hanging it from the roof of the "_shugduf_." At last all was ready. The boys mounted their ponies and the camel men cried out orders to the great beasts, and the camels got up slowly, groaning under their big loads. Al-Abukar looked splendid as he rode at the head of the little caravan on his swift dromedary. Over the dromedary's back were two big saddle-bags with long crimson tassels which hung nearly down to the ground; the saddle itself was of red leather with a high metal pommel at the front and back. Beside the dromedary cantered the two boys. Rashid turned around and waved a last good-bye with his spear to all his friends whom he had left behind at the encampment, while all the little Bedouins ran after him a little way, shouting at the tops of their voices: "May your shadow never grow less, O little Son of the Walls!" Soon the "Black Tents" were left far behind, and the camels struck into their regular caravan gait, rolling and lurching like a ship at sea. If you were riding a camel for the first time you would understand why the Arabs call the camel "the ship of the desert," for it rolls backwards and forwards and pitches first forward and then backward exactly like a ship in mid-ocean. At noon they halted for the midday meal. While the men hastily put up a tent, the children gathered dry branches in the thickets of thorn-bushes with which to make the fire. Meanwhile Hamid had spied some tents in the distance; and, near them, a woman tending goats. "May we go and ask her to give us some milk, mother?" asked Fatimah. "Yes, and here is some bread to give her in exchange for the milk," said Zubaydah. The Bedouin woman gladly filled the bowl that the children brought with them with nice warm goat's milk, but when Fatimah offered her the bread, she shook her head angrily. "Nay, nay, I am not a '_labban_,'"--a milk-seller,--she said. The true Bedouins think it is a disgrace to sell milk, and that it is only right that they should give it freely to any stranger who may ask for it. When the children got back with the milk, Zubaydah was frying dates in butter, and soon they were all sitting in the shade of the tent eating heartily of them and the cold meat and rice and cakes.