with nothing in his pockets but his hands. Scarcely, however, had he set
foot in the captain's launch, when a breathless creature scrambled down
from the square above and galloped towards him. It was the camel, the
faithful camel, which for twenty-four hours had been searching for its
master.

When Tartarin saw it, he changed colour and pretended not to know it;
but the camel was insistent. It frisked along the quay. It called to its
friend and regarded him with tender looks. "Take me away!" Its sad eyes
seemed to say, "Take me away with you, far away from this mock Arabia,
this ridiculous Orient, full of locomotives and stage coaches, where I
as a second-class dromadary do not know what will become of me. You are
the last Teur, I am the last camel, let us never part, Oh my Tartarin!"
"Is that your camel?" Asked the Captain.

"No!... No!... Not mine." Replied Tartarin, who trembled at the thought of
entering Tarascon with this absurd escort; and shamelessly repudiating
the companion of his misfortunes he repelled with his foot the soil of
Algeria and pushed the boat out from the shore. The camel sniffed at the
water, flexed its joints and leapt headlong in behind the boat, where it
swam in convoy toward the Zouave, its hump floating on the water like a
gourd and it neck lying on the surface like the ram of a trireme.

The boat and the camel came alongside the Zouave at the same time. "I
don't know what I should do about this dromadary." Said the captain, "I
think I'll take it on board and present it to the zoo at Marseille, I
can't just leave it here." So by means of block and tackle the wet camel
was hoisted onto the deck of the Zouave, which then set sail.

Tartarin spent most of the time in his cabin. Not that the sea was