Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/116

 108 Bedouins could not tear their eyes from her, smacking their lips from admiration, according to their habit, and murmuring:

"Allah! Mashallah! Bismillah!"

The second day at noon after that long rest, Stas and Nell who rode this time on the same camel, had a moment of joyful emotion. Immediately after sunrise a light and transparent mist rose over the desert, but it soon fell. Afterwards when the sun ascended higher, the heat became greater than during the previous days. At moments when the camels halted there could not be felt the slightest breeze, so that the air as well as the sands seemed to slumber in the warmth, in the light, and in the stillness. The caravan had just ridden upon a great monotonous level ground, unbroken by khors, when suddenly a wonderful spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the children. Groups of slender palms and pepper trees, plantations of mandarins, white houses, a small mosque with projecting minaret, and, lower, walls surrounding gardens, all these appeared with such distinctness and at distance so close that one might assume that after the lapse of half an hour the caravan would be amid the trees of the oasis.

"What is this?" exclaimed Stas. "Nell, Nell! Look!"

Nell rose, and for a time was silent with astonishment, but after a while began to cry with joy:

"Medinet! to papa! to papa!"

And Stas turned pale from emotion.

"Truly—Perhaps that is Kharga—But no! That is Medinet perhaps—I recognize the minaret and even see the windmills above the wells—"

In fact, in the distance the highly elevated American windmills resembling great white stars, actually glistened. On the verdant background of the trees they