some little distance off, rose the high, graceful white neck
and the elegant head of such a camel as he had never set eyes upon
before--a swanlike, beautiful creature, as far from the rough, clumsy
baggles as the cart-horse is from the racer.

The beast was kneeling under the shelter of the rocks with its waterskin
and bag of doora slung over its shoulders, and its forelegs tethered
Arab fashion with a rope around the knees. Anerley threw his leg over
the front pommel while Abbas slipped off the cord. Forward flew
Anerley towards the creature's neck, then violently backwards, clawing
madly at anything which might save him, and then, with a jerk which
nearly snapped his loins, he was thrown forward again. But the camel
was on its legs now, and the young pressman was safely seated upon one
of the fliers of the desert. It was as gentle as it was swift, and it
stood oscillating its long neck and gazing round with its large brown
eyes, whilst Anerley coiled his legs round the peg and grasped the
curved camel-stick which Abbas had handed up to him. There were two
bridle-cords, one from the nostril and one from the neck, but he
remembered that Scott had said that it was the servant's and not the
house-bell which had to be pulled, so he kept his grasp upon the lower.
Then he touched the long, vibrating neck with his stick, and in an
instant Abbas' farewell seemed to come from far behind him, and the
black rocks and yellow sand were dancing past on either side.

It was his first experience of a trotting camel, and at first the
motion, although irregular and abrupt, was not unpleasant. Having no
stirrup or fixed point of any kind, he could not rise to it, but he
gripped as tightly as be could with his knee, and he tried to sway
backwards and forwards as he had seen the Arabs do. It was a large,
very concave Makloofa saddle, and he was conscious that he was bouncing
about on it with as little power of adhesion as a billiard-ball upon a
tea-tray. He gripped the two sides with his hands to hold himself
steady. The creature had got into its long, swinging, stealthy trot,
its sponge-like feet making no sound upon the hard sand. Anerley leaned
back with his two hands gripping hard behind him, and he whooped the
creature on. The sun had already sunk behind the line of black volcanic
peaks, which look like huge slag-heaps at the mouth of a mine.
The western sky had taken that lovely light green and pale pink tint
which make