My Arabs
were busy with their bread; Mysseri rattling tea-cups; the little
kettle, with her odd old-maidish looks, sat humming away old songs
about England; and two or three yards from the fire my tent stood
prim and tight, with open portal, and with welcoming look, like
"the old arm-chair" of our lyrist's "sweet Lady Anne."
At the beginning of my journey the night breeze blew coldly; when
that happened, the dry sand was heaped up outside round the skirts
of the tent, and so the wind, that everywhere else could sweep as
he listed along those dreary plains, was forced to turn aside in
his course and make way, as he ought, for the Englishman. Then
within my tent there were heaps of luxuries--dining-rooms,
dressing-rooms, libraries, bedrooms, drawing-rooms, oratories, all
crowded into the space of a hearthrug. The first night, I
remember, with my books and maps about me, I wanted light; they
brought me a taper, and immediately from out of the silent Desert
there rushed in a flood of life unseen before. Monsters of moths,
of all shapes and hues, that never before perhaps had looked upon
the shining of a flame, now madly thronged into my tent, and dashed
through the fire of the candle till they fairly extinguished it
with their burning limbs.
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