Colin was right. It was their ordinary breakfast. He might have added, their dinner too, for they would not likely obtain another morsel of food before sundown.
But where was the breakfast of Colin and his fellow-captives? This was the question that interested them far more than the dietary of the Bedouins. They were all hungering like hyenas, and yet no one seemed to think of them--no one offered them either bite or sup. Filthy as was the mess made by the Arab women, and filthily as they prepared it,--boiling it in pots, and serving it up in wooden dishes, that did not appear to have had a washing for weeks,--the sight of it increased the hungry cravings of the captives; and they would fain have been permitted to share the scanty _dejeûner_.
They made signs of their desire; piteous appeals for food, by looks and gestures; but all in vain: not a morsel was bestowed on them. Their brutal captors only laughed at them, as though they intended that all four should go without eating.
It soon became clear that they were not to starve in idleness. As soon as they had been started to their feet each of them was set to a task; one to collect camels' dung for the cooking fires; another to fetch water from the brackish muddy pool which had caused the oasis to become a place of encampment; while the third was called upon to assist in the loading of the tent equipage, along with the salvage of the wreck,--an operation entered upon as soon as the sangleh had been swallowed.
Sailor Bill, in a different part of the douar, was kept equally upon the alert: and if he, or any of the other three, showed signs of disliking their respective tasks, one of the two sheiks made little ado about striking them with a leathern strap, a knotty stick, or any weapon that chanced to come readiest to hand. They soon discovered that they were under the government of taskmasters not to be trifled with, and that resistance or remonstrance would be alike futile. In short, they saw _that they were slaves_!
While packing the tents, and otherwise preparing for the march, they were witnesses to many customs, curious as new to them. The odd equipages of the animals,--both those of burden and those intended to be ridden,--the oval panniers, placed upon the backs of the camels, to carry the women and younger children; the square pads upon the humps of the maherries; the tawny little piccaninnies strapped upon the backs of their mothers; the kneeling of the camels to receive their loads,--as if consenting to what could not be otherwise than disagreeable to them,--were all sights that might have greatly interested our adventurers, had they been viewing them under different circumstances.