No More Learning

A shot was
fired, and the silence shut down again, bringing the desire to sleep.
Dick could think no longer. He was too tired and stiff and cramped to
do more than nod uneasily from time to time, waking with a start and
punching the driver with the pistol.

"Is there a moon? " he asked drowsily.

"She is near her setting. "

"I wish that I could see her. Halt the camel. At least let me hear the
desert talk. "

The man obeyed. Out of the utter stillness came one breath of wind.
It rattled the dead leaves of a shrub some distance away and ceased. A
handful of dry earth detached itself from the edge of a rail trench and
crumbled softly to the bottom.

"Go on. The night is very cold.
"

Those who have watched till the morning know how the last hour before
the light lengthens itself into many eternities. It seemed to Dick that
he had never since the beginning of original darkness done anything at
all save jolt through the air. Once in a thousand years he would
finger the nailheads on the saddle-front and count them all carefully.
Centuries later he would shift his revolver from his right hand to his
left and allow the eased arm to drop down at his side. From the safe
distance of London he was watching himself thus employed,--watching
critically. Yet whenever he put out his hand to the canvas that he might
paint the tawny yellow desert under the glare of the sinking moon, the
black shadow of a camel and the two bowed figures atop, that hand held a
revolver and the arm was numbed from wrist to collar-bone. Moreover, he
was in the dark, and could see no canvas of any kind whatever.

The driver grunted, and Dick was conscious of a change in the air.

"I smell the dawn," he whispered.

"It is here, and yonder are the troops. Have I done well? "

The camel stretched out its neck and roared as there came down wind the
pungent reek of camels in the square.

"Go on. We must get there swiftly. Go on. "

"They are moving in their camp.