“I think you have been following the Jadi too much,” I suggest, meaning that he had been going too directly south. I do not intimate that he has been asleep on his camel. I do not want to shake his self-confidence and have him become demoralized.
“Allah bless you,” he murmurs, scanning the horizon anxiously. “I must have done so, for we should not have reached hills so early. I counted on getting to them at dawn. But in the morning God will bring solace.”
I am somewhat troubled as I leave him, and lie awake a few minutes hoping that we have not gone far from our proper path. But I am too tired to worry long and go quickly to sleep.
Saturday, May 12. At 4:30 A.M. Mohammed’s voice is heard. “To prayers, O ye Moslems!” We quickly get up and are under way in an hour. Mohammed puts himself at the head of the caravan, and I join him. He is still troubled, but as we round a corner of the hills he sighs with relief.
“Allah be praised. There lies our way.”
He points to the northwest corner of the chain of hills, and we make for it. We reach it at 9:45 A.M. and pitch camp. The camels are sent a kilometer or two into the hills to graze. Men and camels are in bad shape, and water is getting scarce.
In the afternoon Mohammed and Herri go ahead into the hills to make a track in the sand with a tent-pole for us to follow. At 5 P.M. we follow them into the sand-dunes and thence into the hills. The gherds are fortunately not many, though they are steep enough. But it is the hilly country beyond them that takes it out of us. Our feet keep bumping into stones in the dark, and Bedouin shoes are little protection against such painful encounters. The collisions are particularly numerous and correspondingly trying in the early morning hours when we are terribly sleepy and walk with eyes half shut.
On previous nights I have tried the experiment of suddenly firing two or three shots from my rifle to rouse the men to life, and with good results. Each time they have responded with a loud cheer and mended their pace forthwith. But to-night the scheme fails. About three in the morning, the most deadly hour of all, I “empty gunpowder,” but not a voice responds.
There is one small compensation, however, in the midst of this dead expanse of fatigue and depression. The crescent moon rises in the early morning, a curved silver thread with a brilliant star above it, an exquisite piece of celestial jewelry. I fix my eyes on their beauty and forget for a moment the bruises that my poor feet are getting.
When, a little later, we reach a patch of dry grass, we are all ready to let the camels graze for a while and to give our tired bodies a brief respite. At dawn we halt again for morning prayers. We have barely risen from our knees when most of the men wrap themselves in their jerds and fall on the beautiful red sand like white stones. The caravan goes limping on, and the sleepers join us presently, I hope a little refreshed.