Ab-Domen Allah
On the fourth day we faced the empty desert. Never had I felt more completely a Sheik. My friends Swank and Whinney had caught my enthusiasm as well as my mode of dress and address.
“Hail, El-Swanko!” I would say; “Son of the well-known morn and illustrious evening-star, may thy blessings be as the hairs on thy camel’s head and thy bed as soft as his padded hoof.”
“Back at you, Dhubel-dhub, Sheik of the Moplah Chapter,” my friend would cry, being a bit unpracticed in the fine points of sheik-talk. But he came on rapidly and was soon able to converse fluently in the ornate hyperbole of the country.
The desert and the ocean have been frequently compared but happenings of the next few days were to bring this comparison home in no uncertain terms. Swank and Whinney suffered acutely from their first experience on camel-back and even I felt somewhat uneasy until I became accustomed to DeLong’s pitch and roll. The “ship-of-the-desert” is no idle poeticism.
Beyond Tejigia we were completely out of sight of water. No trace of passing craft broke the horizon about us. Like an admiral at the head of his fleet I scanned the sky anxiously. Three days passed. On the fourth a violent head wind forced us to tack in order to keep the sand out of our eyes.
The next morning I rose to face a titanic struggle between earth and sky. The desert was rising. After a three-mile advance I gave the order to heave-to. The camels were anchored fore-and-aft, to long tent-pegs. The sand became increasingly fluid. Low ripples running over its face rapidly rose to waves which dashed their stinging spray over us with the rasping hiss of a devil’s hot breath. In the lulls I could hear the wails of the doolahs and the bubbling roar of the camels.