Ibrahim put his muffled head in at the door of the tent.
"Walking?" she asked.
"We goin' to start walkin'."
When she came out, she found that the brushwood fire had been pulled to pieces.
"Down there they not see nothin'," said Ibrahim, pointing towards the darkness before them.
"And the men? Does it matter about the men?" she asked perfunctorily. She did not feel that she really cared.
"All the men sleepin', except Hamza. Him watchin'."
The tents of the men were at some distance. She looked, and saw no movement, no figures except the faint and grotesque silhouettes of the hobbled camels.
"I say that I follow my Lord Arminigel."
They started into the desert. As they left the camp, Mrs. Armine saw Hamza behind her tent, patrolling with a matchlock over his shoulder.
The night was dark and starless; the breeze, though slight and wavering over the sands, was penetrating and cold. The feet of Mrs. Armine sank down at each step into the deep and yielding sands as she went on into the blackness of the immeasurable desert. And as she gazed before her at the hollow blackness and felt the immensity of the unpeopled spaces, it seemed to her that Ibrahim was leading her into some crazy adventure, that they were going only towards the winds, the desolate sands, and the darkness that might be felt. He did not speak to her, nor she to him, till she heard, apparently near them the angry snarl of a camel. Then she stopped.
"Did you hear that? There's some one near us," she said.
"My lady come on! That is a very good dromedary for us."
"Ah!" she said.
She hastened forward again. In two or three seconds the camel snarled furiously again.
"The Bedouin he make him do that to tell us where he is," said Ibrahim.
He cried out some words in Arabic. A violent guttural voice replied out of the darkness. In a moment, under the lee of a sand dune, they came upon two muffled figures holding two camels, which were lying down. Upon one there was a sort of palanquin, in which Mrs. Armine took her seat, with a Bedouin sitting in front. A stick was plied. The beast protested, filling the hollow of the night with a complaint that at last became almost leonine; then suddenly rose up, was silent, and started off at a striding trot.
Mrs. Armine could not measure either the time that elapsed or the space that was covered during that journey. She was filled with a sense of excitement and adventure that she had never experienced before, and that made her feel oddly young. The dark desert, swept by the chilling breeze, became to her suddenly a place of strong hopes and of desires leaping towards fulfilment. She was warmed through and through by expectation, as she had not been warmed by the great camp fire that had been kindled to greet Nigel. And when at last in the distance there shone out a light, like an earth-bound star, to her all the desert seemed glowing with an almost exultant radiance.