At sunset I make it a point to be near the guide and unobtrusively to check him up with my compass in those uncertain hours before the stars come out. When the dark falls a lantern is lighted and given to the guide. Then we follow that elusive pin-point of yellow in the darkness. It winks a provocative invitation to follow, but we can never reach it. The camels like to have the lantern ahead of them and move briskly forward in pursuit. Twelve or thirteen hours of walking, if conditions have been good, bring us to the end of the day’s trek, though sometimes we cannot go on so long.
“Eddar ya ayan; home for you who are weary,” is shouted by the guide and repeated by every man in the caravan. Then the men collect the camels and divide them, the water-camels here, those carrying tents over there, the camels with luggage for the barricade yonder. The camels are barrakked—kneel with grunts of satisfaction to have their loads removed. Now we must be vigilant, for men tired by a day’s trek are likely to be careless and let boxes with precious instruments or cameras fall with disastrous violence.
The baggage is arranged in a barricade, if the night promises to be windy, and the tents are pitched in their triangle, unless the night is particularly calm and pleasant. I could never decide which moment was fuller of satisfaction, that in which the tent was set up after a hard day’s trek or that in which it was pulled down preliminary to taking the road again.
Then the fire is built and the leaping flames of the hatab throw a warm glow over the sand. The first thing is tea. Now I realize to the full the virtues of the dark bitter-sweet liquid that the Bedouins know by that name. They make tea by taking a handful of the leaves and a handful of sugar and boiling them briskly in a pint of water. The result would drive a housewife of the West almost insane, but it is a wonderful stimulant after a hard day’s trek in the desert and a glorious reviver of one’s energies and spirits.
ZWAYA CHIEFS AT KUFRA
The men of the caravan are not slow to prepare and eat the evening meal, to feed the camels, and then to dispose themselves for sleep. But I must compare my six watches and wind them, record the photographs made during the day, change the cinema films in the darkness, no mean feat in itself, label and store the geological specimens I have collected, and write up my diaries. The glasses of Bedouin tea which I have drunk help me to accomplish these duties and then probably stimulate me to a walk in the desert. If there is no bitter cold wind I go for perhaps half a mile, looking back from time to time at the silhouette of the caravan against the sky. The dark masses of the tents, the baggage, and the kneeling camels, touched here and there with flickers of light from the dying fire, in the midst of that immense sea of sand, make a picture full of mystery and fascination. All about me is silence. There is no wind whispering in the leaves, no murmur of the waters of a brook, such as one hears in the wooded wilds; no slap and plash and swish of waves against the ship’s side such as are always present at sea. Nothing but silence. Silence, the sands, and the stars.
CHAPTER XII
THE ROAD TO ZIEGHEN WELL