And yet, at the proper time, I went to El Abid’s again for dinner. Some of the Bedouin chiefs were my fellow-guests, and once more the route to the southward was discussed. Bu Helega persisted in his refusal to go by way of Ouenat.
“The conditions laid down by Sayed Idris,” he said, “call for a journey to Wadai and not to Darfur.” He would send neither his camels nor his men that way. I argued like a lawyer that since he had contracted to provide thirty-five marhalas—or days’ journeys—from Kufra southward, it should make no difference to him whether I use those marhalas to go to Wadai or to El Fasher or back to Egypt. He was unconvinced by this ingenious reasoning, but when he realized that I was determined, that El Abid was not opposed to my plan, and that I was willing to take fewer camels than originally stipulated, he gave a reluctant consent. But he would not go himself or send his men.
Sunday, April 8. The affair of Bu Helega’s horse came to a head. I bought him for thirty-three pounds. He was sturdy and a splendid traveler, needing to drink only every second day.
After luncheon I took El Abid’s photograph and had a long talk with him about his malady, which he bore with true Bedouin fortitude, about conditions in Cyrenaica and Egypt, and about my plans for the trip to the Sudan.
I had had bad luck with my scientific work at Kufra. I did not find it easy to escape surveillance and to move about unattended or to use my instruments without arousing suspicion. What was worse, it had been cloudy every day since I arrived there, and I had been unable to take observations of the sun or Polaris with the theodolite.
WHITE SAND VALLEY AND EXPLORER’S CAMP
A view of the inhabitants of Ouenat, the second oasis discovered by the explorer
After dinner I was thoroughly tired. I had used up all the indigestion tablets which I brought with me. I felt that it would be a relief to get back to the simplicity of the open desert again.
Monday, April 9, was still cloudy, but a cool breeze was blowing. I spent a quiet day, reading in Idris’s library, developing a few films, and buying girbas and barley for the journey. Sayed El Abid gave me copies, written with his own hand, of letters by El Mahdi to various ikhwan. He made me presents of a Moorish knife in a silver scabbard and a flint-lock pistol also beautifully inlaid.