"You have probably witnessed some scenes of heartless cruelty--scenes that shocked and wounded the most sensitive feelings of your nature. I have witnessed forty times as many. While suffering the agonies of thirst and hunger, you may have prayed for death as a relief to your anguish. Where such have been your circumstances once, they have been mine for forty times. "You may have had some bright hopes of escaping, and once more revisiting your native land; and then have experienced the bitterness of disappointment. In this way I have suffered forty times as much as any one of you." Sailor Bill and the young gentlemen who had been for several days under the pleasant hallucination that they were on the high road to freedom, were again awakened to a true sense of their situation by the words of a man far more experienced than they in the deceitful ways of the desert. Before separating for the night, the three mids learnt from Bill and his brother that the latter had been first officer of the ship that had brought him to the coast. They could perceive by his conversation that he was an intelligent man, one whose natural abilities and artificial acquirements were far superior to those of their shipmate, the old man-of-war's-man. "If such an accomplished individual," reasoned they, "has been for ten years a slave in the Saara, unable to escape or reach any place where his liberty might be restored, what hope is there for us?" CHAPTER SIXTY SIX. A LIVING STREAM. Every hour of the journey presented some additional evidence that the kafila was leaving the Great Desert behind, and drawing near a land that might be considered fertile. On the day after parting from the wreckers, a walled town was reached; and near it, on the sides of some of the hills, were seen growing a few patches of barley. At this place the caravan rested for the remainder of the day. The camels and horses were furnished with a good supply of food and water drawn from deep wells. It was the best our adventurers had drunk since being cast away on the African coast. Next morning the journey was continued. After they had been on the road about two hours, the old sheik and a companion, riding in advance of the others, stopped before what seemed in the distance a broad stream of water. All hastened forward, and the boy slaves beheld a sight that filled them with much surprise and considerable alarm. It was a stream, a stream of living creatures moving over the plain. It was a migration of insects, the famed locusts of Africa. They were young ones, not yet able to fly; and for some reason, unknown perhaps even to themselves, they were taking this grand journey. Their march seemed conducted in regular order and under strict discipline. They formed a living moving belt of considerable breadth, the sides of which appeared as straight as any line mathematical science could have drawn.