Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/102

 thousand people, nor from what source he drew the vast amount of gold pounds which it was evident he had spent. Lanice became more interested in him than in his smoothly flowing words. Behind him stretched the desert, a thing of infinite size and horror. Across it moved the white-shrouded fierce lancers of the desert, the red and blue tassels forming silken skirts before their horses' knees. She saw these men at daybreak, when the first clear rays stood level from the horizon, turn towards the sun and, without the prostrations and ablutions of the true Mohammedan, go through their own ancient rites until the orb was clear above the desert's edge. 'For they were Sun-worshippers before Mohammed came,' said Jones, 'and such they really are to-day. Their prophets have warned them that it is evil to salute the rising sun because at this time the Devil's horns appear. Nothing can change them. They know nothing of the pilgrimage to Mecca except how to plunder the pilgrims and are indifferent to the feast of Ramadan. They still sacrifice sheep and camels at the tombs of their ancestors.'

He spoke of the lakes of mirage, rising before one on all sides, quivering in the heat, nodding their phantom palm trees. 'Dreary land of death...little dried-up lizards looking as though they had never had one drop of water upon their ugly bodies.' And once travelling out from the Wells of Wokba he and his caravan had all but perished of thirst. For days fifteen or eighteen hours out of the twenty-four were spent on the camels crawling like flies on the