“I rode out by myself that day on my old Kara Tagh mare. She was very quiet, and if you knee-haltered her loosely would stay for hours without trying to stray. I climbed up the high dune, and sat looking out over the desert, thinking about my old relative’s tragic journey. It was warm in the sun, and I had not slept well the previous night—an uncommon thing for me, as you know.”
I have seen Wrexham sleep quietly in the most noisy, disturbing places, when circumstances prevented him doing any work, and he had a little sleep to make up, or thought a reserve would be handy the next night or two. He is a most extraordinarily imperturbable person.
“It may be that I dozed for a few minutes and probably dreamt a bit. You see, I’d been reading my old great-great-uncle’s diary during the night when I couldn’t sleep. But I seemed awake all right. Well, presently a most extraordinary feeling came over me, of some one trying to attract my attention, some one very anxious that I should hear him.
“I really can’t explain what it was, but it got stronger and stronger. It was as though some one out in the desert was calling and calling to me, although, mind you, there was no sound.
“I sat staring out over the dazzling sand, and then, despite the peculiar sensation, I suppose I really did sleep, for the next thing that happened was that I saw a man in the desert, plodding through the sand. How far he was from me I could not say, but the impression was exactly the one you get looking at a fellow through a very high-power telescope. You can see him apparently only a few feet away, and yet you know—although you can make out the buttons on his coat and almost see the colour of his eyes—that he’s really quite a long way off.
“You remember that Hun sniper you showed me through a signal telescope one day in France, Harry: seemed as if he was six feet away instead of nearly a hundred yards? Well, that was the impression.
“This fellow was plodding drearily through the sand, dragging his feet as though dead beat. His face was grey and haggard, and his lips black and swollen, and his eyes all red. I didn’t see his clothes clearly at all, and have no recollection of what they were like, although, I remember the absolutely done-in appearance of his whole figure.
“As I watched him staggering on, he fell, and lay still a minute. Then he pulled himself up on one arm—he gave me the impression, by the way, of having only one arm—and looked my way, and his lips seemed to be working. Then again I got that inexplicable sensation of some one trying to make me hear over great spaces.
“I suppose I woke up then, for suddenly the man disappeared, and there was only the bare empty desert before me once more. But stronger than ever was the sensation of some one far off calling and calling in a silent voice.
“Well, I sat there a bit, and sometimes the feeling was stronger and sometimes fainter, but always there, rather like when you’re listening to a distant sound across a valley, and sometimes the wind almost sweeps it away, and then suddenly there it is again clear and sharp.