Twentieth EveningIt was more than a fortnight since the Moon had shone. Now
he stood once more, round and bright, above the clouds, moving
slowly onward. Hear what the Moon told me.
"From a town in Fezzan I followed a caravan. On the margin
of the sandy desert, in a salt plain, that shone like a frozen
lake, and was only covered in spots with light drifting sand, a
halt was made. The eldest of the company—the water gourd hung at
his girdle, and on his head was a little bag of unleavened
bread—drew a square in the sand with his staff, and wrote in it a
few words out of the Koran, and then the whole caravan passed over
the consecrated spot. A young merchant, a child of the East, as I
could tell by his eye and his figure, rode pensively forward on his
white snorting steed. Was he
