The reader may wonder that this was a question at all. Having been told that the camel carried a saddle, and was otherwise caparisoned, it will naturally be conjectured that the animal had got loose from some owner, and was simply straying. This was the very hypothesis that passed before the mind of our adventurers. How could they have conjectured otherwise? Indeed it was scarce a guess. The circumstances told them to a certainty that the camel must have strayed from its owner. The only question was: where that owner might be found. By reading, or otherwise, they possessed enough knowledge of the coast, on which they had been cast away, to know that the proprietor of the "stray" would be some kind of an Arab; and that he would be found living--not in a house or a town--but in a tent; in all likelihood associated with a number of other Arabs, in an "encampment." It required not much reasoning to arrive at these conclusions; and our adventurers had come to them almost on that instant, when they first set eyes on the caparisoned camel. You may wonder that they did not instantly set forth in search of the master of the maherry; or of the tent or encampment from which the latter should have strayed. One might suppose, that this would have been their first movement. On the contrary, it was likely to be their very last; and for sufficient reasons,--which will be discovered in the conversation that ensued, after they had swallowed their liquid breakfasts. Terence had proposed adopting this course,--that is, to go in search of the man from whom the maherry must have wandered. The young Irishman had never been a great reader,--at all events no account of the many "lamentable shipwrecks on the Barbary coast" had ever fallen into his hands,--and he knew nothing of the terrible reputation of its people. Neither had Bill obtained any knowledge of it from books; but, for all that,--thanks to many a forecastle yarn,--the old sailor was well informed both about the character of the coast on which they had suffered shipwreck, and its inhabitants. Bill had the best of reasons for dreading the denizens of the Saaeran desert. "Sure they're not cannibals?" urged Terence. "They won't eat us, any how?" "In troth I'm not so shure av that, Masther Terry," replied Bill. "Even supposin' they won't ate us, they'll do worse." "Worse!" "Aye, worse, I tell you. They'd torture us, till death would be a blissin'." "How do you know they would?" "Ach, Masther Terry!" sighed the old sailor, assuming an air of solemnity, such as his young comrades had never before witnessed upon his usually cheerful countenance; "I could tell yez something that 'ud convince ye of the truth av what I've been sayin', an' that'll gie ye a hidear av what we've got to expect if we fall into the 'ands av these feerocious Ayrabs." Bill had already hinted at the prospective peril of an encounter with the people of the country. "Tell us, Bill. What is it?"