"I can make out their faces," muttered he, after a time; "and ugly enough are they. One is yellow, the other black. He must be a negro,--of course he is,--he's got woolly hair too. It's he that rides the camel,--just such another as this that stumbled over us. The yellow man upon the horse has a pointed beard upon his chin. He has a sharp look, like those Moors we've seen at Tetuan. He's an Arab, I suppose. He appears to be the master of the black man. I can see him make gestures, as if he was directing him to do something. There! they have stopped,--they are looking this way!"
"Marcy on us!" muttered old Bill, "if they have speered the glass!"
"Troth! that's like enough," said Terence. "It'll be flashing in the sun outside the sand. That sharp-eyed Arab is almost sure to see it."
"Had you not better draw it in?" suggested Harry Blount.
"True," answered Colin. "But I fear it would be too late now. If that's what halted them, it's all over with us, so far as hiding goes."
"Slip it in, any how. If they don't see it any more, they mayn't come quite up to the ridge."
Colin was about to follow the advice thus offered, when on taking what he intended to be a last squint through the telescope, he perceived that the travellers were moving on up the beach, as if they had seen nothing that called upon them to deviate from their course.
Fortunately for the four "stowaways," it was not the sparkle of the lens that had caused them to make that stop. A ravine, or opening through the sand-ridges, much larger than that in which our adventurers were concealed, _emboucheed_ upon the beach, some distance below. It was the appearance of this opening that had attracted the attention of the two mounted men; and from their gestures Colin could tell they were talking about it, as if undecided whether to go that way or keep on up the strand.
It ended by the yellow man putting spurs to his horse, and galloping off up the ravine, followed by the black man on the camel.
From the way in which both behaved,--keeping their eyes generally bent upon the ground, but at intervals gazing about over the country,--it was evident they were in search of something, and this would be the she-camel that lay tethered in the bottom of the sand-gorge, close to the spot occupied by our adventurers.