Cecily and I retired to get some sleep if possible, and the men buried their unfortunate comrade. We did not attend, as it is always so intensely piteous a ceremony—a burial without a coffin—at least to me it seems far worse than seeing a coffin put into the earth. I gave Clarence a blanket to wrap our follower in. He seemed amused, and certainly did not use it, for I saw him lapped in it a night or so later. I rebuked him, but he said it was a different blanket. All men are liars, and though an estimable servant, our head-man was no exception to the rule.
We investigated to see that the funeral had been conducted properly, and ordered more stones and brushwood to be piled on top, such a rampart indeed that Clarence said we were giving our dead friend the grave of a chief. Then, in the late afternoon we marched away, leaving the lonely stockade behind us. Every man of the caravan threw some grass upon the grave and, touching their ears, prayed to Allah.
Cecily and I could not help feeling very sorry, but in half an hour the men had all forgotten, and marched chanting a droning song. The camels that had been the charge of the dead man now were controlled by a lively little fellow, and the whole incident seemed of no moment.
Any amount of wild geese abode here. It was rather like keeping a vast poultry farm. The birds were so ridiculously tame and easily caught. At our next trek we should have to consider the return journey across the Marehan as begun, and we should not be likely to make any water for five or six days. Everything was carefully filled up, and the march commenced at 3.30 a.m. The net result of this Marehan excursion was one leopard and one wild dog, which we would just as soon have been without as with. They may be hard to shoot, and come on—I have heard so—but take it how you like, with everything said that can be to belaud them into valuable treasures, dogs aren’t very grand trophies when all is done. Who values a coyote in Canada?
We passed thousands of grazing camels. The men in charge weren’t bothering about water at all, but drank milk only. I arranged with Clarence that our men were to go on to rations of dates, and do without rice for the trip over the waterless desert. Rice in such quantities sucks up such an amount of water, and it was safer to keep it for drinking purposes merely. The dates are very nutritious, and natives often live on nothing else for days.
We camped about eleven o’clock, when the sun grew too fierce to let us proceed. We did a few more miles in the evening. Every hour we were not on trek we spent in exhausted sleep. Even as we marched I was often in a condition of somnolence that prevented my guiding the pony in the least.
We passed a fine range of mountains, said to be alive with leopards. We saw the tracks of several, but time did not permit of a stalk. However, one came to stalk us, very thoughtfully, and saved us a lot of trouble. We made the round of the camp that night very late before turning in to see that all was extra safe. The camels were lying in rows, some with heads outstretched flat, snake-like, on the sand, asleep, others chewing the cud, watching us lazily with keen bright eyes threading our way among the débris of the stores. Our candle lamps were hardly needed here, the bright fires lighted us to bed, and we had but just settled down when the most prodigious shouting and banging of tin pans together roused us up again. Then two shots reverberated on the night. By the time I was sufficiently clad to emerge with propriety the camp was more or less calm again, save for a few men jabbering in excited groups. The ponies stood in a bunch, and one or two of the camels had risen. A leopard had jumped the zareba, but was immediately turned by having a piece of lighted brushwood thrust in his face. One of the hunters had fired after the retreating animal, and claimed to have hit it. As no man of the black persuasion cares to go outside a zareba at night, all investigations had to be put off until day-break, when, without waiting for breakfast, we hurried out to see what we should see.
The hunter was right. The blood trail was plain, and held on at intervals for a mile or more, when it led us to a flimsy bit of thorn growing in some rocky cover. Stones and shouts did not serve to eject our visitor of the night before, but we heard his singing snarls. Posting ourselves some hundred yards away, for a wounded leopard is not likely to prove an amiable customer, Clarence made some fire alongside us with another hunter by twirling the fire stick. And as soon as the flame burst from the timber he fostered it with a little durr grass, then using it to ignite a larger torch, ran towards the citadel and threw the blazing thing into the midst. Speedily the flames took hold, burning all before it.