And to say the truth, though there might be no fear, there was anxiety as well as curiosity in the attention with which they listened to the wild bursts of Moorish music, which came ever and anon more distinctly from the quarter in which the Arab horseman had been seen to disappear.
De Vaux spoke in a whisper to the King.

"Were it not well, my liege, to send a page to the top of that sand-bank?
Or would it stand with your pleasure that I prick forward?
Methinks, by all yonder clash and clang, if there be no more than five hundred men beyond the sand-hills, half of the Soldan's retinue must be drummers and cymbal-tossers.

Shall I spur on ?" The baron had checked his horse with the bit, and was just about to strike him with the spurs when the King exclaimed, "Not for the world.
Such a caution would express suspicion, and could do little to prevent surprise, which, however, I apprehend not." They advanced accordingly in close and firm order till they surmounted the line of low sand-hills, and came in sight of the appointed station, when a splendid, but at the same time a startling, spectacle awaited them.
The Diamond of the Desert, so lately a solitary fountain, distinguished only amid the waste by solitary groups of palm-trees, was now the centre of an encampment, the embroidered flags and gilded ornaments of which glittered far and wide, and reflected a thousand rich tints against the setting sun.

The coverings of the large pavilions were of the gayest colours--scarlet, bright yellow, pale blue, and other gaudy and gleaming hues--and the tops of their pillars, or tent-poles, were decorated with golden pomegranates and small silken flags.

But besides these distinguished pavilions, there were what Thomas de Vaux considered as a portentous number of the ordinary black tents of the Arabs, being sufficient, as he conceived, to accommodate, according to the Eastern fashion, a host of five thousand men.