The hot wind blew every moment stronger and more steadily, and now it blew up a cloud of dust and sand from the shuffling feet of the camels.
Jakoub rode on ahead with a mounted Arab, whom I took to be the owner, or at least the hirer of the camels.
We were travelling about east-sou’-east, our route making an acute angle with the coast. After about an hour’s going, the desert rose to a stony ridge where there was an outcrop of some pale fossiliferous rock which lay in flat slabs like an artificial pavement. Turning to look back from the summit of this ridge I found I could see the sea again. It was ruffled and grey. Darker “cat’s-paws” flew over it here and there, and already the waves were beginning to curl and show white gleams of foam.
The Astarte was visible near the sky-line, standing out to sea with a free sheet. My heart yearned after her, as I thought of the familiar cosy saloon and the friendly faces I had left.
Jakoub halted his camel and waited till I came up. He salaamed respectfully, perfect in his part of dragoman, and rode side by side with me.
“It will be a bad night, effendi,” he said. “It is a khamsin.”
“Well, I suppose we must grin and bear it.”
I spoke boldly, though I quailed at the word khamsin; I had heard so much of this dreaded wind.
“As long as the camels will travel,” he said. “But the sky looks as if it will be a very bad sand-storm.”
“How far is it to this place we are going to?”