This suggestion made me look at the
affair in a new light. I should have been glad enough to put up
with the slight privation to which my concession would subject me,
and could have borne to witness the semi-starvation of poor
Dthemetri with a fine, philosophical calm, but it seemed to me that
the scheme, if scheme it were, had something of audacity in it, and
was well enough calculated to try the extent of my softness. I
well knew the danger of allowing such a trial to result in a
conclusion that I was one who might be easily managed; and
therefore, after thoroughly satisfying myself from Dthemetri's
clear and repeated assertions that the Arabs had really understood
the arrangement, I determined that they should not now violate it
by taking advantage of my position in the midst of their big
Desert, so I desired Dthemetri to tell them that they should touch
no bread of mine. We stopped, and the tent was pitched. The Arabs
came to me, and prayed loudly for bread. I refused them.
"Then we die!"
"God's will be done!"
I gave the Arabs to understand that I regretted their perishing by
hunger, but that I should bear this calmly, like any other
misfortune not my own, that, in short, I was happily resigned to
THEIR fate.
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