were gone. He kept, in spite of his obvious efforts
to repress them, breaking into little nervous sniggers.
He looked as shamefaced and confused as an ordinary
Englishman would if he were compelled to appear
in public in the airy costume of his morning bath.
That ‘ brigand of the Sahara,’ great strapping fellow
as he was, positively blushed a deep, ruddy brown,
at the indignity which he was made to undergo in
exposing his face to a stranger. He hung his head
and turned his face aside in a torment of outraged
modesty and bashfulness which, though extremely
ludicrous, was almost pitiful to see.
So confused was he that, though he could not
prevent us from seeing his naked face, he evidently
made up his mind that he would, at all events,
prevent himself, by closing his eyes, from seeing that
we saw it. And this he did, keeping his eyes closed
during the whole of the time that his face was exposed.
As this seemed to some extent to relieve his
bashfulness and detracted but little from the value
of the photographs, I raised no objections to this
ostrich-like manoeuvre.
It was curious to see the celerity with which he
covered his face as soon as he was told that his
ordeal was over, and to hear the huge sigh of relief
with which he rose to his feet from the sitting
posture which I had got him to adopt in order to
bring his face down on to a level with the camera.
He had every appearance of having gone through
the worst five minutes of his life.
While we had been thus engaged our camels had
been marching on without us, and time, if we wished