The sight filled them with consternation. Not that it was a camel; but because, at the same time, they discovered that there was a man upon its back, who, brandishing a long weapon, was urging the animal towards them.
The three midshipmen made no effort to continue the journey thus unexpectedly interrupted. They saw that any attempt to escape from such a fast-going creature would be idle. Encumbered as they were with their wet garments, they could not have distanced a lame duck; and, resigning themselves to the chances of destiny, they stood awaiting the encounter.
When the camel and its rider first loomed in sight,--indistinctly seen under the shadow of the sand dunes,--our adventurers had conceived a faint hope that it might be Sailor Bill.
It was possible, they thought, that the old man-o-war's-man, left unguarded in the camp, might have laid hands on the maherry that had made away with him, and pressed it into service to assist his escape.
The hope was entertained only for an instant. Bill had encountered no such golden opportunity; but was still a prisoner in the tent of the black sheik, surrounded by his shrewish tormentors.
It was the maherry, however, that was seen coming back, for as it came near the three middies recognized the creature whose intrusion upon their slumbers of the preceding night had been the means, perhaps, of saving their lives.
Instead of a Jack Tar now surmounting its high hunch, they saw a little wizen-faced individual with sharp angular features, and a skin of yellowish hue puckered like parchment. He appeared to be at least sixty years of age; while his costume, equipments, and above all, a certain authoritative bearing, bespoke him to be one of the head men of the horde.
Such in truth was he,--one of the two sheiks,--the old Arab to whom the straying camel belonged; and who was now mounted on his own maherry.
His presence on the strand at this, to our adventurers, most inopportune moment, requires explanation.
He had been on the beach before, along with the others; and had gone away with the rest. But instead of continuing on to the encampment, he had fallen behind in the ravine; where, under the cover of some rocks, and favored by the obscure light within the gorge, he had succeeded in giving his comrades the slip. There he had remained,--permitting the rest to recross the ridge, and return to the tents.