254 The Light That Failed past a disgusted sentry who was used to stampeding camels. “What’s the row now?” he cried. “Every stitch of my kit on that blasted dromedary,” Dick answered, after the manner of a common soldier. “Go on, and take care your throat’s not cut out side — you and your dromedary’s.” The outcries ceased when the camel had disappeared behind a hillock, and his driver had called him back and made him kneel down. “Mount first,” said Dick. Then climbing into the second seat and gently screwing the pistol muzzle into the small of his companion’s back, “Go on in God’s name, and swiftly. Good-bye, George. Remember me to Madame, and have a good time with your girl. Get forward, child of the Pit!” A few minutes later he was shut up in a great silence, hardly broken by the creaking of the saddle and the soft pad of the tireless feet. Dick adjusted himself comfortably to the rock and pitch of the pace, girthed his belt tighter, and felt the darkness slide past. For an hour he was conscious only of the sense of rapid progress. “A good camel,” he said at last. “He was never underfed. He is my own and clean bred,” the driver replied. “Go on.” His head dropped on his chest and he tried to think, but the tenor of his thoughts was broken because he was very sleepy. In the half doze in seemed that he was learning a punishment hymn at Mrs. Jennett’s. He had committed some crime as bad as Sabbath-breaking, and she had locked him up in his bedroom. But he could never repeat more than the first two lines of the hymn — When Israel of the Lord believed