There the animals went best foot forward, as if they smelled the dawn and hoped to meet it sooner by hurrying.

We had quite a job to keep back for the loaded beasts, and three or four men, instead of one, brought up the rear to prevent straggling.
Then, about an hour before dawn, in a hollow between sparsely vegetated sand-dunes, Grim ordered camp pitched, and in very few minutes there was a row of little cotton tents erected, with a small fire in front of each.
Most of the camels were turned out at once to graze off the unappetizing-looking thorns, sparse and dusty, that peppered the field of view like scabs on a yellow skin.

There was no fear of their wandering too far, for if the camel ever was wild, as many maintain that he never was, that was so long ago that the whole species has forgotten it, and he wouldn't know what to do without his owner somewhere near.
He has to be used at night, because he will not eat at night; on the other hand, he refuses to sleep in the daytime; so there is a limit to what you can do with a camel, in spite of his endurance, and once in so many days he has to be given a twenty-four hour rest so that he may catch up on both food and sleep.
But on the dry plains such as where we were then they give less trouble than anywhere.

For though they soon go sick on good corn, which a horse must have, they thrive and grow fat on desert gleanings; and whereas sweet water will make their bellies ache oftener than not, the brackish, dirty stuff from wells by the Dead Sea shore is nectar to them.
Have you ever seen twenty camels rolling all at once with their legs in the air, preparatory to making breakfast off dry thorns that you wouldn't dare handle with gloves on?
If so, you'll understand that they're the perfect opposite of every other useful beast that lives.
But not all the camels were turned out.

Grim chose Mujrim--Ali Baba's eldest son--a black-bearded, forty-year-old giant--two of the younger men, Narayan Singh and me; and with the lady Ayisha's beast in tow with the empty _shibrayah_ set off directly the sun was a span high over the nearest dune.
We rode almost straight toward the sun, and in five minutes it appeared how close we were to the village whence danger might be expected.