[1] A swift dromedary.

The Maribout stopped his dromedary at the tent of the Emir Hadjy, who commanded the caravan.  Anxious to know the reason of his following us, which I had a foreboding was connected with my camel, I hastened to the spot.  I found him haranguing the Emir and the people who had surrounded him, denouncing woe and death to the whole caravan if my camel was not immediately destroyed, and another selected in his stead.  Having for some time declaimed in such an energetic manner as to spread consternation throughout the camp, he turned his dromedary again to the west, and in a few minutes was out of sight.

The Emir was confused; murmurings and consultations were arising among the crowd.  I was afraid that they would listen to the suggestions of the Maribout; and, alarmed for my camel, and the loss of the honour conferred upon him, I was guilty of a lie.

“O!  Emir,” said I, “listen not to that man who is mine enemy:  he came to my house, he ate of my bread, and would have been guilty of the basest ingratitude by seducing the mother of my children; I drove him from my door, and thus would he revenge himself.  So may it fare with me, and with the caravan, as I speak the truth.”

I was believed; the injunctions of the Maribout were disregarded, and that night we proceeded on our march through the plains of El Tyh.

As your highness has never yet made a pilgrimage, you can have no conception of the country which we had to pass through:  it was one vast region of sand, where the tracks of those who pass over it are obliterated by the wind,—­a vast sea without water,—­an expanse of desolation.  We plunged into the desert; and as the enormous collection of animals, extending as far as the eye could reach, held their noiseless way, it seemed as if it were the passing by of shadows.

We met with no accident, notwithstanding the prophecies of the Maribout; and, after a fatiguing march of seven nights, arrived safely at Nakhel, where we replenished our exhausted water-skins.  Those whom I knew joked with me, when we met at the wells, at the false prophecies of my enemy.  We had now three days of severe fatigue to encounter before we arrived at the castle of Akaba, and we recommenced our painful journey.

It was on the morning of the second day, about an hour after we had pitched out tents, that the fatal prophecy of the Maribout, and the judgment of Allah upon me, for the lie which I had called on him to witness, was fulfilled.

A dark cloud appeared upon the horizon; it gradually increased, changing to a bright yellow; then rose and rose until it had covered one-half of the firmament, when it suddenly burst upon us in a hurricane which carried every thing before it, cutting off mountains of sand at the base, and hurling them upon our devoted heads.  The splendid tent of the Emir which first submitted to the blast, passed close to me, flying along with the velocity of the herie, while every other was either levelled to the ground or carried up into the air, and whirled about in mad gyration.