They do not marshal
themselves into great packs like the wild dogs of Eastern cities,
but follow their prey in families, like the place-hunters of
Europe. Their voices are frightfully like to the shouts and cries
of human beings. If you lie awake in your tent at night you are
almost continually hearing some hungry family as it sweeps along in
full cry. You hear the exulting scream with which the sagacious
dam first winds the carrion, and the shrill response of the
unanimous cubs as they sniff the tainted air, "Wha! wha! wha! wha!
wha! wha! Whose gift is it in, mamma?"
Once during this passage my Arabs lost their way among the hills of
loose sand that surrounded us, but after a while we were lucky
enough to recover our right line of march. The same day we fell in
with a Sheik, the head of a family, that actually dwells at no
great distance from this part of the Desert during nine months of
the year. The man carried a matchlock, of which he was very proud.
We stopped and sat down and rested awhile for the sake of a little
talk. There was much that I should have liked to ask this man, but
he could not understand Dthemetri's language, and the process of
getting at his knowledge by double interpretation through my Arabs
was unsatisfactory.
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