A slinking shape melted into the shadows of the tent adjoining mine, and I concluded that a camp dog had aroused me. Then, in the early morning silence, I heard a faint call, and peering through the gloom to the east saw, in black silhouette, a solitary figure standing near the extremity of the camp. In those days, my friends, I was a brave fellow--we are all brave at nineteen--and throwing a cloak over my shoulders I strode intrepidly towards this figure. I was within ten paces when a hand was raised to beckon me. It was the mysterious stranger! Again he beckoned to me, and I approached yet nearer, asking him if it was he who had aroused me. He nodded, and by means of a grotesque kind of pantomime ultimately made me understand that he had caused me to be aroused in order to communicate something to me. He turned, and indicated that we were to walk away from the camp. I accompanied him without hesitation. Although the camp was never left unguarded, no one had challenged us; and, a hundred yards beyond the outermost tent, this strange old man stopped and turned to me. First, he pointed back to the camp, then to myself, then out along the caravan road towards the Nile. "Do you mean," I asked him--for I perceived that he was dumb or vowed to silence--"that I am to leave the camp?" He nodded rapidly, his strange yellow eyes gleaming. "Immediately?" I demanded. Again he nodded. "Why?" Pantomimically he made me understand that death threatened me if I remained--that I must leave the Bedouins before sunrise. I cannot convey to you any idea of the mad earnestness of the man. But, alas! youth regards the counsels of age with nothing but contempt; moreover, I thought this man mad, and I was unable to choke down a sort of loathing which he inspired in me. I shook my head then, but not unkindly; and, waving my hand, prepared to leave him. At that, with a sorrow in his strange eyes which did not fail to impress me, he saluted me with gravity, turned, and passed out of sight. Although I did not know it at the time, I had chosen of two paths the one that led through fire. I slept little after this interview--if it was a real interview and not a dream--and feeling tired and unrefreshed, I saw the sun rise purple and angry over the distant hills. You know what _khamsîn_ is like, my friends? But you cannot know what _simoom_ is like--_simoom_ in the heart of the desert! It came that morning--a wall of sand so high as to shut out the sunlight, so dense as to turn the day into night, so suffocating that I thought I should never live through it! It was apparent to me that the Bedouins were prepared for the storm. The horses, the camels and the asses were tethered in an enclosure specially strengthened to exclude the choking dust, and with their cloaks about their heads the men prepared for the oncoming of this terror of the desert.