His saddle was hung in the fork of a
sandal-wood-tree, not the sandal-wood of commerce, and leaving him
stretched upon the burning sand, we moved away. Of course he was never
seen or heard of after.
That night we encamped only a few miles from the ridges, at a place
where there was a little dry grass, and where both camels and horses
were let go in hobbles. Long before daylight on the following morning,
old Jimmy and I were tracking the camels by torchlight, the
horse-bells indicating that those animals were not far off; the
camel-bells had gone out of hearing early in the night. Old Jimmy was
a splendid tracker; indeed, no human being in the world but an
Australian aboriginal, and that a half or wholly wild one, could track
a camel on some surfaces, for where there is any clayey soil, the
creature leaves no more mark on the ground than an ant--black children
often amuse themselves by tracking ants--and to follow such marks as
they do leave, by firelight, was marvellous. Occasionally they would
leave some marks that no one could mistake, where they passed over
sandy ground; but for many hundreds beyond, it would appear as though
they must have flown over the ground and had never put their feet to
the earth at all.
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