Abd er Rahman next burst unceremoniously in and asked abruptly when I intended to start. I told him I meant to get off as soon as I possibly could. He looked immensely relieved, and said that the sooner we started the better.
I tried to find out from them exactly what was in the wind, but native-like I could not get them to be in the least explicit.
I went out and interviewed Qwaytin and told him I intended to start the next day. He grinned and refused absolutely to let me have the camels. I felt inclined to take them, but a large trading caravan with several bedawin had come in during the day, and these men all hung round listening to our conversation in what seemed to be anything but a friendly frame of mind, and I thought it best not to make the attempt. I sounded one or two of the traders with a view to hiring their camels, but met with a surly refusal. I might, of course, have tried to get the Government authorities in the oasis to force Qwaytin to fulfil his arrangement with me; but it does not do, in a case of this sort, for a white man to appeal to a native official for assistance, so I had to look round for some other means of continuing our journey.
After some difficulty, I succeeded in hiring three other camels that were in the oasis. Then, having arranged to leave part of my baggage, for which I had no immediate use, in safe keeping in Mut till I could send for it, I prepared to start on the following morning.
I told Abd er Rahman to send his friend out into the village to gather information as to the Senussia. During our visits to Mut, this man on several occasions made himself considerably useful to us; but fearing to appear openly as being favourable to us, he always conducted his operations in a clandestine manner.
Abd er Rahman, who was always in his element in anything in the nature of an intrigue, introduced him secretly into the store in the middle of the night, and brought him up to my room. His information was entirely satisfactory. I was unable to get out of him exactly what scheme the Senussi had devised for our benefit, but he declared that our intention to make an early departure had entirely checkmated them, and that they were furiously angry in consequence.
But the Mawhubs, he said, were extremely cunning, and as we had now got the better of them, their one desire was that the whole episode should be forgotten and that they should now appear as our best friends. He said that, if we got away quickly, we had nothing to fear from them; but he emphasised the importance of not wasting any time. I sent him off with a thumping bakhshish.
CHAPTER XXV
THE police officer and the Government doctor—a Moslem this time—insisted on accompanying me across the oasis. They told me they had sent a messenger to Tenida to say that we intended to stay the night there, so as to give the ’omda time to prepare for us.