On the twenty-eighth of March we began our onward journey.
THE ATTACK
It did not prove an altogether easy task to collect in Leet all the camels that we needed for our journey. Leet is a very small town with a population numbering only a few hundred, and with no commercial connections whatever. To facilitate matters with regard to our journey I thought it advisable to pay my respects to the Sheikh of Leet. Never before had a Christian entered his home.
The medium of our conversation was my dragoman. After the customary felicitations had been exchanged, the Sheikh invited me to dine with him. His house was a hut put together of boards and matting, and without windows of any kind. Along two sides of the room stood divans covered with skins. The walls were hung with weapons. The rest of the furniture of the room consisted of smoking apparatus. Throughout the entire time before dinner, cups of Mocha and of a sort of lemonade were passed around. The coffee was of the Arabian variety, viz., in its preparation the husks of the coffee bean, and not the beans themselves, are boiled. The result is a bitter drink not at all palatable to Europeans, but which, for the sake of politeness, must be swallowed down under any circumstances. The preparations for the meal were begun while we were sitting in the room. First of all, quite a large round mat of woven straw was laid on the bare earth in the middle of the room. Then servants brought in rice, which was heaped in a huge mound in the middle of the mat. A few jars of mixed pickles completed the course. Instead of sitting, we lay down at the table. Spoons were provided, however. Soon we were all cheerfully doing our best to diminish the mountain of rice. Meanwhile the meat course had arrived at the front of the house. It consisted of a whole roast sheep, which, as such, did not make its appearance on the table however. Knives and forks there were none. Two servants, detailed for this special duty, tore the roast sheep into pieces with their hands, and placed before each one of us, on the mat, the piece that was intended for him. In the course of the two days that we had to spend in Leet, we succeeded in getting together about ninety camels. With this number we could begin our march. The Sheikh assured us that we would meet with the others en route on the following day. I purchased a large number of straw mats and distributed them among my men. Later, these mats proved an excellent protection against the heat of the sun. Our caravan left Leet in the evening, and we began our march into the desert. Most of the camels carried only burdens, especially water, ammunition, the machine guns, and provisions. The water prospects for our journey were far from favorable. I had to reckon with the possibility of traveling for days without being able to replenish our water supply.
A journey on camels is necessarily a slow one. To begin with, the camel is not a speedy traveler; furthermore, ours was a caravan of ninety camels at the start, and later, of one hundred and ten. The camels on which the officers rode were the only ones that were allowed to run free. All the others were fastened together by ropes, the muzzle of one being tied by a rope of about four meters’ length to the tail of the one in front of it. Naturally, the long line of camels thus formed could not move with the rapidity of a single animal, since the rate of progress of the whole line had to be kept down to the pace of the slowest camel. Moreover, frequent halts had to be made, to re-adjust packs that had slipped, to mend a broken saddle girth, to recover a saddle that had slipped off, and for other like causes of delay.
We kept to a route that follows the coast, close by the sea. This entire region is considered unsafe, robbery and attacks upon passing caravans being the order of the day. From the time we left Leet, our rifles were therefore kept loaded, and ready to shoot. We were fortunate in that the nights were bright with the light of a full moon. As a rule, we began the day’s march at four o’clock in the afternoon, and arrived at nine or ten in the morning at the place where we were to rest. On an average, we spent about fourteen to eighteen hours a day in the saddle. As camels are pacers, it is very fatiguing to ride them.