There were many distractions to relieve the monotony of the journey; there were little organised robberies. If the servants, clothed anew from head to foot, had the misfortune to feel warm and to take off their cloaks or draw out their handkerchiefs, the agile Nasr supervened and claimed his due. There were also mimic combats. All in a body, standing erect on their high stirrups, they raised a shout, savage, swift, strident, which the horses obeyed in starting off at full gallop. The mirrors with which the saddles were decorated flashed in the sunlight. The Bedouins brandished their lances. The horses increased their speed to join the mares. The horsemen approached yelling at the full strength of their lungs their war cries; their bodies were almost touching; and at the moment when the inevitable shock was causing the spectators to gasp with fear, a turning movement executed with excessive rapidity checked the career of their excited mounts. The love of fighting made some of them forget the game, and the blows became real; blood flowed in thin furrows, while the heaving flanks of the cruelly abused horses were covered with sweat and their mouths filled with red foam. Then the caravan encountered the tribe of the Sebah, which was descending the slopes of Mount Belaz, which was simply a hill of sand. It was a magnificent and unknown spectacle. Not a fold of the ground which was not covered with moving specks. It seemed that a page of ancient history had come to meet the travellers. The desert on the march! In the first years of the Hegira the nomads marched thus with slow and weary steps towards uncertain goals. How had it changed, in fact? The strong camels were still adorned with the haudag--compromise between the palanquin and the basket--from which emerged the heads of women and children, and the weaker camels carried the carpets rolled into a ball, which appeared at a distance enormous nests. The men, mounted on their mares, surrounded by wild colts, shook their keffiyes of vibrating colours; the women, the ring in the nose, well-tattooed lips, wrapped in their red cotton cloth spotted with white, resumed instinctively the antique poses. And then there were the beautiful naked children. Nothing gives more the impression of eternity and immobility than the free life of the desert. And, carried back for several centuries, Lady Hester, Bruce and Meryon watched the tribe disappearing in the distance, until it became like a handful of confetti dispersed over the sands and the call of the camel-drivers: "Yalla! Yalla!" died away.