It was a straggling, thatched, squalid-looking cluster of huts, surrounded by a mud wall with high, arched gates.

Only one minaret like a candle topped with an extinguisher pretended to anything like architecture, and even from where we were you could see the rubbish-heaps piled outside the wall to reek and fester.

There was a vulture on top of the minaret, and kites and crows--those inevitable harbingers of man--were already busy with the day's work.
The village Arabs are perfunctory about prayer, unless unctuous strangers are in sight, who might criticize.

So, although we approached at prayer-time, it was hardly a minute after we rose in view over a low dune before a good number of men were on the wall gazing in our direction.

And before we had come within a mile of the place the west gate opened and a string of camel-men rode out.
The man at their head was the sheikh by the look of him, for we could see his striped silk head-dress even at that distance, and he seemed to have a modern rifle as against the spears and long-barreled muskets of the others.