In a second the pace of the caravan is changed. Hear how hurriedly and anxiously the bells swing and beat! They peal as if to awaken soldiers and citizens in a burning town. Now the rain patters down on the level desert and the camels begin to slip. We must hasten if our lives are dear to us, or the desert will suck us in at the eleventh hour. The men shout to urge on the camels. Now the bells clang as though to wake up the dead to judgment.
There goes a camel down in the mire. Poor animals, they are lost on such ground, for they have not hoofs like horses, but soft callous pads. When they slip they do so thoroughly and suddenly. All four legs fly up in one direction, and the heavy body with the loads thumps down in the other. It is bad enough for the camel, but still worse for his rider. A moment before he sat so well packed up, longing for the edge of the desert sea, and now he lies sprawling in the slush.
One after another the camels fall and have to be helped up again. All this causes delay, and meanwhile the clay is gradually becoming softer. At every step the camels sink in deeper, the rain still pelts down, and the bells ring jerkily. If they cease to ring, it will be because the desert has conquered; at this very moment they stop.
"What is the matter?" I call out.
"We are at the Devil's ditch," answers a voice in the darkness.
The bells ring slowly again as the camels wade one after the other through a trench full of salt water. I tighten my knees when my turn comes. I cannot see the water, but I hear it spurting and splashing round the legs of the camels in front of me. Now my camel slides down a nasty mud bank. He slithers and wriggles about to keep himself up, and then he, too, tramps through the water and scrambles up the other side.
"Tamarisks," I hear some one shout. Welcome sound! It means that we are safe, for nothing grows in the salt desert. When we come to the first tamarisks we are again on sandy ground. Then all danger is past, and what does it matter if we are dead tired? Two more hours and we reach a village. There Gulam Hussein makes ready a chicken and some eggs, and then I lie down in a hut and sleep as I have never slept before.
The Oasis of Tebbes
Any one who has not travelled himself for weeks together through the desert can scarcely conceive what it is to come at length to an oasis. An oasis is to the desert wanderer what a peaceful island with its sheltered anchorage is to mariners. Oases are like stars in the dark vault of heaven, like moments of happiness and prosperity in a man's life. If you had roamed for two months in the wilderness, like myself and my Persians, you would be able to understand our feelings when we at last saw the date-palms of Tebbes beckoning to us in the distance (see map, p. [73]).