ink they were!" replied Howard. "These are Nubians, and I
wish we had more of them. They hate the Arabs, too, and that is another
good thing."

"What a lot of camels!" exclaimed Harry, as, passing over the top of a
little hill, they came in sight of lines and lines of those ships of the
desert, lying down, kneeling, standing; "and how strong they smell. One
might fancy oneself in a menagerie."

"Yes; Hercules himself could not have kept that quarter clean; the
Augean stables were nothing to it. But look at these fellows we are
coming to now. You seem to be a bit of a military critic; what do you
think of them, and how do you like their mounts?"

They were now passing a small camp on the further side of the mound they
had crossed. Three rows of tents, and aligned with each on the reverse
flank a line of horses picketed--small, almost ponies, thin in the
flank, wiry, but extremely rough. There had been no pains taken in
grooming them evidently. As for the men loafing or swaggering about,
those who were fully dressed were so stuck all over with arms--pistols,
swords, daggers--that one wondered if they were suddenly attacked what
weapon they would have recourse to first, and if they would make up
their minds in time.

"I am no critic at all," said Harry, laughing, "though every Englishman
thinks he is a judge of horseflesh, and I fancy those might possess
endurance, if not up to much weight. As for the men, they seem to fancy
themselves more than the Egyptians; but a more villainous, blood-
thirsty, thievish-looking set of scoundrels, it has never been my luck
to see herded together."

"You are not far out," said Howard, laughing. "I should not like one of
them to come across me if I were wounded and helpless, and had anything
worth stealing about me, let me be friend or foe. But they are useful
for scouting, and there are only three hundred of them. They are called
Bashi-Bazooks, you know."

"Yes," said Harry; "from _Bash_, a head; _da_, without; _zook_, brains.
So called, as the `Old Skekarry' said, because they live on their wits:
_lucus a non lucendo_."

"My dear fellow," remonstrated Howard, "have I come all this way from
conventional England to the wilds of Africa to hear once more that
dreadful quotation? Go on; give us _Sic vos non vobis_, and follow it
up with _Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis_, or any other little
House-of-Commons delicacy; only don't say _et nos_, as some of the
sena