III
Again, with rude storms past, the elements lapse drearily to their accustomed routine, governed, without heart, by the Power of the Sun.
And it is under those conditions that the traveller in the desert must chiefly toil, or, failing to toil, sink beneath the weight of undermining, brain-drugging heat and monotony.
Wherefore a commonplace day finds me toiling the sand in a God-forgotten recess of the world. I have killed some meat for the camp, but that hardly interests me. I am aware that I am “off colour”—almost ill. But I am more disturbed still by the knowledge that I am weary, and not so strong as I was; and that slowly, insidiously, the sun is sapping my life-blood.
A Tuareg stranger is with my follower, who carries the gazelle. I hear the man being told exaggerated stories of my shooting capabilities:
“He kills whether they stand or run.”
And again:
“If a man walk for two days this white man still fit to reach him with gun.”
I wanly smile; in no mood for laughter.
Slowly we trudge toward camp. It is about noon, and desperately hot. But I am thinking neither of the remorseless sting of the sun nor of the desolation of Africa: I am wondering if I dare break into one of our last bottles of whisky if I go under again with fever. It is the priceless medicine of the exhausted and malaria-stricken, and the meagre store cannot last to the end.
On entering camp, however, my thoughts are turned into other channels. The camels have just been watered, and recline on the sand. About half of them have sores to be doctored, ugly, suppurating saddle wounds and foot wounds, fly-ridden and ill healing; so bad that every now and then they claim a victim in death. For an hour I work with scissors and knife among filth and disinfectant: crude, intimate surgery that might have turned me sick if it had not been a daily task for a long time.
The animals were then turned loose to find what scrub they could about the old well-head. But soon they lay down in the hot sun, for there was next to nothing to eat.
Elatu, the head camel-man, had gravely told me, while we worked together over the wounds, his fears and doubts of the land we travelled, and his fears and doubts of the well-being of our beasts of burden. We had camped that morning at water, but he advised that we should not stay through the day, because there was no fit pasturage for our weary, used-up camels.
Wherefore, after a meal that I barely touched, except to gulp down cup after cup of tea, we reloaded the tired camels in the small hours of the afternoon and continued slowly on our way.
Ten hours later we wearily camped, and men scarcely spoke while, in the deep darkness, they unburdened the camels, and laid themselves down to rest . . . and then the kindly hand of night was mercifully laid upon the cares of an impoverished band.