28th.
Left “Keimat en Nus”—the half-way tent—at a very early hour and rode for a long time by moonlight; one can cover more ground when it is cold, but there is a danger of going off the track. The mashrab is faint enough in the daytime, but almost invisible at night. When we start off in the morning all the men shout together three times, “Ya Sidi Abdel Gader,” invoking a certain sheikh who is the patron sheikh of travellers. One of my men told me that he was born in Berber “min zaman”—a long time ago—and used to travel about the Sudan deserts without water or food. His descendants still live at Berber where he is buried.
For the first hour or two the men are very lively and rouse the desert with their singing. Usually one man sings the refrain in a rather drawling falsetto voice, and then the whole lot take up the chorus with a real swing, and some of them have very good voices, too. Sometimes the song is the history of a certain Abu Zeyed, a legendary character and an exceedingly lewd fellow, from all I could hear of his doings. Sometimes they would sing stories from the Thousand and One Nights, or sometimes the songs would be chants that reminded one of the Gregorian music in a very “High” church at home. Often I used to ride on ahead, almost out of sight, and then wait while the chanting voices gradually grew louder, and the long line of camels came into sight across the white moonlit sands. There was something very fascinating in the sound of the singing as we rode through the African desert at night.
But later on, when the sun began to warm up, nobody felt like singing. Occasionally somebody started, and a few voices joined in, but they very soon subsided again. At the midday halt the men rigged up rough bivouacs with blankets, and rifles as tent poles, then for several hours one lay in the scanty shade, feeling like a pat of butter that had been left out in the sun by mistake.
Howa is getting very tired. I picked her up and carried her on the saddle across my knees for several hours to-day. She is quite fit, but 200 miles in the hot weather does take it out of a dog. The camels are in good condition but much looking forward to water, their flanks are beginning to look “tucked in,” and at night some of them groan and gurgle horribly. To-morrow we should be in the oasis at the first well. This evening I functioned with the medicine chest; I gave several of the men pills and Eno’s, which they enjoyed, and dressed a foot with a bad cut on it. My own knees are like raw beef from the sun, though I’ve been wearing shorts all the summer. We have to be “canny” with the water as several of the “fanatis”—water-cans—are leaking. Fortunately I have trained myself only to drink a little in the morning and evening, and I can wash quite thoroughly in two cups of water.
Sometimes in the evening I walk right away from the camp into the utter quiet of the desert, out of sight of camels and men. It is a wonderful sensation to be in such absolute silence, with nothing to see but the horizon and “the rolling heaven itself.” Then I retrace my footsteps to the camp and enjoy the pleasant feeling of seeing the twinkling fires in the distance, and arriving at a neatly laid dinner-table right in the middle of nowhere.
“Daylight dies,
The camp fires redden like angry eyes,
The tents show white
In the glimmering light,