"Surely a camel cannot go there?" I asked Jaffa.

"Yes, camel go down, safe; horse cannot; Bedouin leave horses behind them."

"Will they bring them up to the gap?"

Jaffa did not think they would, and I devoutly hoped that they would not.

I thought how old Popple Opstein's face would have beamed, and his yellow hair stood up, if only he had been here with me on that edge of rocks. Yes, here I was literally on the edge of civilization, where all my life I had longed to be. How my chum would have chaffed me about that if he saw me now! Perhaps in a few hours, if he had the luck to be landed, he would see me.

And, thinking of yellow hair, perhaps little Miss Borsen, if she too could see me and could realize what might soon happen, would treat me as a man. More likely than not she would only have smiled in her tantalizing, irritating way, and told me how uncomfortable I looked.

Jaffa touched me. "Bedouin see very far; very good sight; see us soon."

What an ass I was! I had ordered Webster and his fellows to conceal themselves below the crest, and here I was still sprawling on the sky-line myself.

I crawled lower down; so did Jaffa and Griffiths.

Until I had left the ridge it never occurred to me that probably the advance party of Bedouins would scale the sides of the gap and scatter along the edge. If they did that they would certainly see us; so it was necessary to hide much farther away from it and take no such risk.