It would have been better to have known only the simple
life, the life of these Arabs! Now they were singing about the camp
fires. Queer were the intervals, impossible of notation, but the
rhythms might be gathered... a symphony, a defined scheme.... The
monotony of the chant hushed his thoughts, and the sleep into which
he fell must have been a deep one.
A long time seemed to have passed between sleeping and waking....
Throwing his blanket aside, he seized his revolvers. The night was
filled with cries as if the camp had been attacked. But the
disturbances was caused by the stampeding of the horses; three had
broken their tethers and had gone away, after first tumbling into
the reeds, over the hills, neighing frantically. As his horse was
not one of the three it did not matter; the Arabs would catch their
horses or would fail to catch them, and indifferent he stood watching
the moon hanging low over the landscape, a badly drawn circle, but
admirably soft to look upon, casting a gentle, mysterious light down
the lake. The silence was filled with the lake's warble, and the
ducks kept awake by the moon chattered as they dozed, a soft cooing
chatter like women gossiping; an Arab came from the wood with dry
branches; the flames leaped up, showing through the grey woof of the
tent; and, listening to the crackling, Owen muttered "Resinous
wood.
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