At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative

by John Alfred Gray

I woke him, and we sprang up. A little way off was the soldier holding our horses. We mounted, while the others tried to separate the screaming and fighting stallions by shouting and throwing sticks and stones at them.

It was four o’clock, and we heard the larks singing overhead. Along the road an incessant stream of baggage-horses was passing, trampling and neighing. We had come a great deal more than half-way, for we did not have far to go before we reached the camp. After half an hour or so my tent and baggage turned up.

It was Gur-i-Mar where we camped: we had travelled slowly in the darkness. The Amîr, riding on horseback, arrived with his guard soon after dawn, but it was hours before the stream of pack-horses and camels and elephants had come in.

I had breakfast as soon as the tent was up: cold mutton, biscuit, and tea, and then lay on the ground with a pillow, and went to sleep again. The fever had disappeared. Towards midday it grew frightfully hot, but I did not suffer so much, for my tent was put up in the early morning over cool ground.

In the afternoon the hot winds blew again, and we had a violent dust storm. We did not have the difficulty in procuring food that we had had the day before, and I received also a fair supply of ice.

While the hot winds blew, the rim of the glass I drank out of, though containing iced water, was quite hot to the lips. I slept a good deal during the day. At one in the morning I was called, and I dressed by the light of a candle. When I got outside I found the men were loading up. We started about three a.m. His Highness, I found, had gone on. It was excessively dark, and the Armenian and I got off the road and lost our way on the plains. We rode on trusting to our horses, but they were as much at fault as we. We wandered about, down in hollows and up on ridges, for the plain here was undulating, like downs. We were in the neighbourhood of the Abadu Pass—the valley of death.

It seemed to me we were getting too far to the left, so we branched to the right. Towards dawn it became very windy and dusty. At four o’clock it became lighter and lighter, and the larks began to sing, and after some trouble we found our way back to the road. To my great relief the sky was cloudy, and the morning comparatively cool. I had tucked a biscuit in the top of my boot, and I munched it with great satisfaction: the Armenian nearly went to sleep on horseback. We camped at Naibabad. Soon after the tents were up it began to rain: it was delicious to hear the water come pattering down.

The Amîr Lost on the Plains.

I found we were not the only ones who had lost their way. At dawn the Amîr himself, with his guard, was found wandering off towards Russia.