Read "The Hartley Brothers" by Charlotte Maria Tucker online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
THE Arabs, even the Bedouins, are not a merciless race. Beyond taking away every article of jewellery, three silver watches, a few coins, and the gun, which they thought the best part of the spoil, the Shararat robbers inflicted no injury on their captives. The sons of the desert were puzzled as to what to do with their prize.
The two Hartleys, indeed, could be made something of, for they were evidently strong, vigorous, and active; but the women, one old and the other fragile, seemed likely to be of no use at all. They could neither weave camel's hair nor help to pitch tents; it was doubtful whether they could even skin a sheep and cook it. Would it not be best to leave them behind? But to do so would be to abandon them to inevitable death by hunger and thirst. Though the chief, glancing at Grace Evendale, remarked that it would be easier to make a mashale (water-skin) out of muslin than anything useful out of her, he yet resolved to take her behind him on his camel, and he gave orders to his wild followers to dispose in the same way of the Feringhees (English), putting the mother and child together, such being to him the relationship between Miss Petty and Shelah.