of heart interested him as he lay in the shade of the
tamarisks, asking himself if the white swallow would appear,
thinking that the bird ought to nod to him as it passed, smiling at
the thought, and the smile dying as his dragoman approached; for he
was coming to teach him Arabic. Owen liked to exercise his
intelligence idly; a number of little phrases had already been picked
up, and his learning he tried on the bedouins as they came up the
hill from the lake, preferring speech with them rather than with his
own people, for his own people might affect to understand him, his
dragoman might have prompted them, whereas the new arrivals afforded
a more certain examination, and Owen was pleased when the bedouin
understood him.

Next day he was hawking, and the day after he was again under the
tamarisks learning Arabic, and so the days went by between sport and
study without his perceiving them until one morning Owen found the
spring in possession of a considerable caravan, some five and twenty
or thirty camel-drivers and horsemen; and anxious to practise the
last phrases he had acquired, he went forward to meet the Saharians,
for they were easily recognisable as such by the blacker skin and a
pungent blackness in the eyes. The one addressed by Owen delighted
him by answering without hesitation:

"From Laghouat."

The hard, guttural sound he gave to the syllables threw the word into
wonderful picturesqueness, enchanting Owen. It was the first time he
had heard an Arab pronounce this word, so characteristically
African; and he asked him to say it again for the pleasure of
hearing it, liking the way the Saharian spoke it, with an accent at
once tender and proud, that of a native speaking of his country to
one who has never seen it.

"How far away is--?"

Owen tried to imitate the guttural.

"Fifteen days' journey."

"And what is the road like?"

With the superlative gesture of an Arab the man showed the smooth
road passing by the encampment, moving his arms slowly from east to
west to indicate the circuit of the horizon.

"That is the Sahara," he added, and Owen could see that for the
bedouin there was nothing in the world more beautiful than empty
space and low horizons. It was his intention to ask what were the
pleasures of the Sahara, but he had come to the end of his Arabic
and turned to his dragoman reluctantly. Dragoman and Saharian
engaged in conversation, and presently Owen learned that the birds in
the