There was still no direct way down the hill, and we had perforce to go many miles out of our course, in a long hair-pin loop, to reach anything like decent going. No one who has not attempted to take a car over trackless hills of rough, broken surface, and filled with blind gorges, can have any idea of the difficulties that confronted us here, and during the greater part of our journey to Khwash.
By dint of ceaseless pulling and pushing, and digging the car out again and again, we managed to reach the rendezvous with Landon before nightfall. He marched in a few minutes after we arrived, and was as frankly pleased as astonished to see us. He had just come through another section of those hills himself. He had not, therefore, expected the car would get through, and was wondering how on earth I should ever rejoin him and the army. So we all camped out in the open, grateful for the coolness of the evening, for the heat of the day had been terrific.
Before sunrise on the following morning Landon marched out, and, as soon as we had lost sight of him, Idu, Allan, and myself set off in the car.
I do not propose to give a detailed account of the remainder of our journey. One day was very like another, and the bad surface only differed in quality and degree. The heat was very great by day, and the glare over the sandy wastes and hills almost blinding. Here and there, especially in the Galugan valley, we came across groups of human beings, mostly of a low type of humanity, who bolted in terror at sight of the car.
One evening we halted at a settlement of Rekis, Idu's own tribe, and received a very warm welcome, for one of Idu's wives was amongst his people. The rascal always maintained that he had no interest in women, but, nevertheless, seemed to me to be a very good understudy to the proverbial sailor, for he appeared to have a wife in every village and encampment.
This particular Mrs Idu was delighted at the unexpected reunion with her husband, and did the honours of the camp right royally. Following accepted custom, I, first of all, bought a few sheep from the Jugi-dwellers, and then presented these to them so that they could prepare a feast. Mrs Idu, a very unprepossessing-looking, but highly amiable lady, acted as hostess, and we all squatted round the camp fires while the meat was roasting.
Allan's face was a picture as he watched the tribesmen cook and eat their meat. They hacked chunks of flesh from the dead carcasses of the sheep with the knives they always carried, spitted them on the cleaning rods of their rifles, and roasted them over the fire. These they ate voraciously, as though very hungry, and, as a matter of fact, food in that district is both scarce and monotonous. In any case they devoured the meat whilst it was still nearly raw. Even Idu ate his meat half-cooked, maintaining that it was far more tender in such a state.
Of course, the car was a source of intense interest and excitement. At first the tribesmen were too afraid of it to go anywhere near it, but when they saw it stand quite still at Allan's orders, and that it had no bite, curiosity overcame fear, and, one by one, they crept up and nervously touched it. At this stage Allan sounded the Claxton, and, with shrieks of terror, they all bolted. But Idu, who had come over the mountains in it, and, therefore, had lost all fear of the monster, felt a devil of a fellow, and, with a flourish, assured them it was not the roar inside which made it go, and that it would do no one any harm. So they came back to it once more, and, after some persuasion, were induced to sound the Claxton themselves. Once familiar with it, they laughed like children each time it barked, and I began to wish I had taken the thing off before we started.
After supper Idu prepared my blankets under the shelter of a small bush, but, before turning in, I sat down on the ground for a final smoke, placing the hurricane lamp from the car on the hard smooth earth in front of me.
The light naturally attracted myriads of insects of all sorts, many of which I had never seen before, and which are, I feel sure, unknown in India. Beetles of many sorts swarmed around, both in the air and on the ground, whilst a scorpion, the biggest I have ever seen, darted out from the darkness to inspect the light. He was a brown fellow, not an iridescent blue, like the Burmese variety, though he was quite as big. With his tail curled right over his back, and sting ready to strike, he looked a formidable person, and it was comic to watch the haste with which all the lesser fry scuttled out of his way, and, though he made many attempts to secure his supper, I did not see him succeed, so swift were his intended victims in escaping from their dreaded enemy.