A CAMP-FIRE
BENEATH THE SHADE OF ROCKS
“But where is the water?” I exclaim, scanning the rocks and the sand carpet beneath my feet.
He beckoned me to go with him, and we proceeded until we came to the closed end, or cul-de-sac of the defile. Picking the way among giant boulders until the straight cliff base was reached, my camel-man then halted and pointed with a smile to a dark hole in the wall at the ground’s edge, no larger than the den of hyena or jackal. “Ama!” he exclaimed.
I sat down and lit my pipe; the place was unusual and uncanny. “Water in there, Mohammed? How the devil do you get it out? Go back and bring Sili with a waterskin, and ask Sakari to give you a candle: I want to have a look.”
When he got back we wormed our way into the hole. Past the entrance there was a cavern where a man could stand stooping. Crossing it, another long tunnel led to a further cave, lower than the first, and there, in the bowels of the earth, gleaming in the candle-light, lay a black pool of water, clean, clear, and deliciously cool.
In that mysterious haven of secrecy we camped beside water in abundance . . . and thus it came to pass that the camp-fires of the white man lit the eerie, strangely scrawled cliffs of Inzanenet as the fires of those on many an escapade had often done before, if tales of the land be true.
And owls and bats and ghoul-like shadows were companions through the night, but the white vulture that points the places of water and human dwelling, marked not the sky by day, since even from him of the outer world the secret of the cave was hidden.