"Give them to me now," said Khy-Khevan, "and we will start after to-morrow."
"No," replied Forder, "you come outside, and before the men of the place I will give them to you; they must be witnesses." So in the presence of the men the bargain was made.
In the morning the camels were got together—about a hundred and twenty of them—with eighty men, some of whom came round Forder, and patting their daggers and guns said, "These things are for using on Christians. We shall leave your dead body in the sand if you do not change your religion and be a follower of Mohammed."
After these cheerful encouragements the caravan started at one o'clock. For four hours they travelled. Then a shout went up—"Look behind!"
Looking round Forder saw a wild troop of Bedouin robbers galloping after them as hard as they could ride. The camels were rushed together in a group: the men of Ithera fired on the robbers and went after them. After a short, sharp battle the robbers made off and the men settled down where they were for the night, during which they had to beat off another attack by the robbers.
Forder said, "What brave fellows you are!" This praise pleased them immensely, and they began to be friendly with him, and forgot that they had meant to leave his dead body in the desert, though they still told him he would be killed at the Jowf. For three days they travelled on without finding any water, and even on the fourth day they only found it by digging up the sand with their fingers till they had made a hole over six feet deep where they found some.
At last Forder saw the great mass of the old castle, "no one knows how old," that guards the Jowf[71] that great isolated city with its thousands of lovely green date palms in the heart of the tremendous ocean of desert.
Men, women and children came pouring out to meet their friends: for a desert city is like a port to which the wilderness is the ocean, and the caravan of camels is the ship, and the friends go down as men do to the harbour to meet friends from across the sea.
"May Allah curse him!" they cried, scowling, when they heard that a Christian stranger was in the caravan. "The enemy of Allah and the prophet! Unclean! Infidel!"