The encampment stretched far over the level, arid earth, and there was
more than one tent where the shadowing folds of the banner marked the
abode of some noble Djied. Disorder reigned supreme, in all the desert
freedom; horses and mules, goats and camels, tethered, strayed among
the conical houses of hair, browsing off the littered straw or the
tossed-down hay; and caldrons seethed and hissed over wood fires, whose
lurid light was flung on the eagle features and the white haiks of the
wanderers who watched the boiling of their mess, or fed the embers
with dry sticks. Round other fires, having finished the eating of their
couscousson, the Bedouins lay full-length; enjoying the solemn silence
which they love so little to break, and smoking their long pipes;
while through the shadows about them glided the lofty figures of their
brethren, with the folds of their sweeping burnous floating in the
gloom. It was a picture, Rembrandt in color, Oriental in composition;
with the darkness surrounding it stretching out into endless distance
that led to the mystic silence of the great desert; and above the
intense blue of the gorgeous night, with the stars burning through
white, transparent mists of slowly drifting clouds.
In the central tent, tall and crimson-striped, with its mighty standard
reared in front, and its opening free to the night, sat the Khalifa, the
head of the tribe, with a circle of Arabs about him. He was thrown on
his cushions, rich enough for a seraglio, while the rest squatted on the
morocco carpet that covered the bare ground, and that was strewn with
round brass Moorish trays and little cups emptied of their coffee.
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