Read "The Hartley Brothers" by Charlotte Maria Tucker online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
HAROLD wished to try his Arabic on one of the Lascars who was near the first boat, and find from him the cause of the tedious delay, but was as unsuccessful as Europeans usually are when trying to extract information from Orientals. Harold knew not whether the swarthy Arab understood him or not; the man's eyes, and evidently his thoughts, were wandering in the direction which the ladies were taking. The Lascar looked like one on the watch for something, and all that Harold could draw from him were the ejaculations common on Mahomedan lips, which seem pious when translated, but which often with them express nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders does with a European.
In the meantime, Robin, who had borrowed a gun from Captain Cenci, was on the sharp look-out for game with which to mend the passengers' scanty fare. But not a partridge rose, not a hare came in view. Shelah, who liked to keep pretty near Robin, and was quite as eager as himself to find some creature that might be turned into food, suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the sand, "Partridges been here-look, look! -Hadn't they big claws!"