Oscard expected to reach Msala with his men in forty days.

Piled up in neat square cases, such as could be carried in pairs by a man of ordinary strength, was the crop of Simiacine, roughly valued by Victor Durnovo at forty thousand pounds.

Ten men could carry the whole of it, and the twenty cases set close together on the ground made a bed for Guy Oscard.

Upon this improvised couch he gravely stretched his bulk every night all through the journey that followed.
Over the whole face of the sparsely vegetated table-land the dwarf bushes grew at intervals, each one in a little circle of its own, where no grass grew: for the dead leaves, falling, poisoned the earth.

There were no leaves on the bushes now, for they had all been denuded, and the twisted branches stood out naked in the morning mist.