Everything would be prepared
overnight for a day's excursion and picnic in the desert, which
Saidie particularly delighted in.
The great brown camel, fat and sleek like all Hamilton's animals,
and with an enormous weight of rich hair on his supple neck, would
be kneeling waiting for them below in the dewy compound, while the
early tender light stole softly through the palms; and they would
mount and go swinging out through the great open spaces of the
desert, full of delicate white light, towards the sister-oasis of
Dirampir, where masses of cocoanut palms grew round a set of
springs, and waved their branches joyfully as they drew in the salt
nourishment of the air from the amethystine sea not fifty miles
distant.
Into the shelter of these palms they would come as the first great
golden wave of light from the climbing sun broke over the desert,
and, descending from the camel, walk about in the groves by the
spring, and select a place for boiling their kettle and having
their breakfast. The long ride in the keen air of the morning gave
them great appetites, and they enjoyed it in the whole joyous
beauty of the scene round them. The palm branches over them grew
gold against the laughing blue of the sky, a thousand shafts of
sunlight pierced through the fan-like tracery, the golden orioles
at play darted, chasing each other from bough to bough, the spring
bubbled its cool musical notes beside them, and the sense of the
blighting heat of the ravening desert round them seemed to
accentuate the beauty of the peace and shade in the oasis.
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