went into a large room, in which were long tables, and benches at
them. The dinner was soon brought in. Dishes of fowl and stewed cabbage,
dried fruits, and fresh dates, succeeded one another, with plenty of
bottled beer. There was no bread. But some of the older travellers had
brought some loaves from the _Bentinck_, and were very good-natured in
dividing their store with their fellow-passengers.

[Illustration: SUEZ]

After dinner we had some coffee, which we found very refreshing; and
soon the vans were announced. In a few minutes we were in our old seats
again, cutting our path through the sand and jolting over large blocks
of stone.

"There is another skeleton, papa," cried Hugh, pointing to the whitened
ribs of a camel. "Do they leave the camels to die, and take no trouble
to bury them or do anything with them?"

"Most likely this camel was unable to travel farther," his father said,
"either from fatigue or old age, and so was left behind by his owner to
die. The hot wind and the sun together have bleached his bones. But the
skin and hair of the dead camel are both used by the people of the
desert. They are made into clothes, mats, halters, and many other useful
things."

"Yes," said Hugh, in a sleepy voice; and the next minute down went his
head on his father's shoulder.

Lucy, too, was all but asleep. She was heartily tired of the jolting van
and the changeless dreary sand.

The day had worn on rather wearily to her, and now that night was
setting in she felt cold and tired. She was wrapped up in a large shawl,
and made a pillow of her mother's lap. Indeed, we were all tired. And as
night closed in, and all became dark around us, we began to feel that
there was weariness in crossing the desert, notwithstanding the deep
interest connected with it.

[Illustration]

On, on we went. The sky had become thickly studded with stars; the moon
had risen, and her beams shed a clearer light and cast deeper shadows
than they do in our colder country. All was quiet round us. Not a sound,
except the crushing of the sand beneath our wheels and an occasional
crack of the whip, urging our horses and mules on their way. There was
no chirping of grasshoppers, no croaking of frogs, no beating of
tomtoms, such as we had been used to hear at night in our Indian homes.
All was so still that we might have fancied ourselves the only living
creatures in all the wild waste of sand.

We stopped at one of the little lonely buil