I cannot remain
here in the open--yet I wish to be within sight, that I may see with my
own eyes all that happens. What if I ride to one of the black tents, and
ask for water to wash the mouth of my horse? If they have it not, it is
no matter."
"Thine is a good thought," said Ben Sliman, and rode on, putting his
slim white Arab horse to a trot.
To the left from the group of adobe houses, and at about the same
distance from the rough track on which they had been riding, was a
cluster of nomad tents, like giant bats with torpid wings spread out
ink-black on the gold of the desert. A little farther off was another
small encampment of a different tribe; and their tents were brown,
striped with black and yellow. They looked like huge butterflies
resting. But Maieddine thought of no such similes. He was a child of the
Sahara, and used to the tents and the tent-dwellers. His own father, the
Agha, lived half the year in a great tent, when he was with his douar,
and Maieddine had been born under the roof of camel's hair. His own
people and these people were not kin, and their lives lay far apart; yet
a man of one nomad tribe understands all nomads, though he be a chief's
son, and they as poor as their own ill-fed camels. His pride was his
nomad blood, for all men of the Sahara, be they princes or
camel-drivers, look with scorn upon the sedentary people, those of the
great plain of the Tell, and fat eaters of ripe dates in the cities.
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