Everything here whispered the same message,
said, "We are the denizens of far-away."
In their walk to the camp they were accompanied by a little procession.
Shabah, the Caid of Amara, a shortish man whose immense dignity made
him almost gigantic, insisted upon attending them to the tents, with his
young brother, a pretty, libertine boy of sixteen, the brother's tutor,
an Arab black as a negro but without the negro's look of having been
freshly oiled, and two attendants. To them joined himself the Caid of
the Nomads, a swarthy potentate who not only looked, but actually was,
immense, his four servants, and his uncle, a venerable person like
a shepherd king. These worthies surrounded Domini and Androvsky, and
behind streamed the curious, the envious, the greedy and the desultory
Arabs, who follow in the trail of every stranger, hopeful of the crumbs
that are said to fall from the rich man's table. Shabah spoke French
and led the conversation, which was devoted chiefly to his condition
of health. Some years before an attempt had been made upon his life by
poison, and since that time, as he himself expressed it, his stomach
had been "perturbed as a guard dog in the night when robbers are
approaching.
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