We ate a pretty solid meal, for long travelling and campaigning had inured us to food at the small hours, and we wanted to make as long a march as possible that day, when the camels would be at their freshest. Breakfast over, the camels were brought up by Sadiq and a friend picked up in the village, who hung about our camp while we were there.
Then we set to loading the beasts, who were fairly tractable after their long marches, though, of course, in the manner of all camels, they gurgled and snarled incessantly, or blew out pink bladders from their cavernous, ill-smelling mouths while voicing their complaints. There was no trouble over the water camels; it was the miscellaneous collections such as that carried by the ammunition camel which caused us many anxious moments trying to secure the various odd-shaped packets into two compact loads. Fortunately, they were constant ones that would not have to be broken en route—at least, we hoped not.
By 5.30 A.M. the last camel stood up finally loaded, Firoz hurriedly attaching two hurricane-lamps and a bundle of kitchen oddments to the peak of the saddle, after the manner of the immemorial East.
It was still dark, but there was a faint, faint glimmer in the east that foreshadowed the coming dawn, and the dark velvet of the starlit sky was beginning to show a tinge of indigo above the far horizon. Away on the outskirts of the village a mournful dog wailed his sorrows to the unheeding dark.
A final inspection of the loads by the aid of a lantern, a last look round our camp-site, and then Wrexham—unanimously appointed Caravan Bashi—gave the order to start.
The first part of our way lay along a little track fringing some fields, the last bits of cultivation on the edge of the desert. Thereafter we were to march by Wrexham’s oil compass. We had reconnoitred the first five or six miles the day before, dead level going, so there was no danger of delay by unforeseen obstacles.
With Wrexham and Firoz at the head of the little string of silent-footed camels, Forsyth and Sadiq in the middle to see that no loads slipped or beasts strayed aside before dawn, and Payindah and myself bringing up the rear, we moved out along the sandy track with no sound save the monotonous tinkling of the leading camel’s bell.
Sadiq’s friend, after embracing Sadiq three times in Eastern fashion, stood at the edge of the camp-site to wish us luck as we went. Then he disappeared in the dark, the last fellow-being we were like to see for the next ten days at the most optimistic computation.
There was a slight check as we neared the end of the fields, from which I guessed that Wrexham was getting his bearings; then the leading camel’s bell rang out again on the chill dawn air, the ghostly great beasts in front of me quickened their pace once more, and we passed out into the desert.
The full dawn saw us just emerging from the last vegetation, odd dried-up thickets and reeds, while in front lay the rolling low sand-dunes that were to be our home for some time to come. The air was cold and still, a blessing for which we were devoutly thankful. The first day we had looked out over the desert there had been a strong northeast wind, which blew great yellow sand-spouts along, blinding us from time to time. But to-day, as if for a favourable omen, hardly a breath stirred, and the blue distances were clear.