But, through all, the camels keep ever on, though ever since the sun’s great heat set in their pace has slowed down—and, now, they are just crawling onward on their patient unquestioned task.
Hour after hour the monotonous ride continues. Our band, a mere handful of outgone men who for the present are victims of circumstance destined, as it were, to travel the very plains of Hell, steeped in awful heat and desolation, from which there can never be real escape until that distant “Dreamtime” when we may come to pass out and beyond to a promised land where weary limbs and weary minds may lay them down and rest.
About 4 p.m. Tezarif (the camel that has contracted an ugly swelling in one of her feet) is lagging badly, and pulling hard on the rope that secures her to the camel in front. I shook up Gumbo, dozing and listless from long, comfortless riding, and bade him dismount and get beside the ailing camel to encourage her on and to keep up with the others.
Obediently the man jumped down, and I dropped back with him so that I might talk and keep him to his irksome task. Thereafter he remained beside the camel, encouraging and driving it to keep up with the caravan. And when Gumbo tired, another took his place. So, at the expense of considerable effort, the sick animal is kept to the trail.
And in this way the long afternoon passed on, until, at last, the sun commenced to relax its grip on the earth, and gradually the caravan recovered a certain measure of wakefulness.
Yet man and beast show that they are now very tired. None of the brief, bright gayness of the morning is present, even although the merciful retreat of the sun makes the evening hour delicious and tempting. The fact is that spirits are wearied beyond caring for aught on earth—except a longing to rest and sleep.
About 6 p.m. the hot day closes over the heated earth, as the tyrant sun sets in gorgeous beauty amidst rainbow tints of every hue that mistily touch both earth and sky with magic wand, and belie the terror of that pitiless reign that has passed.
And again the men dismount and pray.
On, through the dusk we travel—and into the night. Body and soul ache for the word to halt and camp; but still we hold on. All know the need that drives us to uttermost effort—need to reach water—and the goal still a long way ahead.
The night is strangely still. The desert’s lack of living creature is more intimately apparent now than through the day, for the vast range of our daylight surroundings has narrowed to our immediate circle, which is no more than a thin line of passage cleaved through thick banks of blackness. In our path no jackal cries; no hyena laughs. Neither does ground-bird twitter, nor wings of night-flight ruffle the air. Nothing moves, nothing lives. We can almost “hear” the silence, it is so acute; and the noiseless feet of the camels move over the sand as if they were ghosts, afraid of disturbing a land of the dead.