Qway, as usual, rode alone fifty yards ahead of the caravan. I rode behind with the rest of the men, dozing occasionally in my saddle, and, in between, turning over in my mind some rather knotty problems—whether the Senussi were really coming; whether we were likely to run into them before reaching Mut; whether an oasis was to be seen from the top of that farthest hill, and, most frequently of all, whether we should meet Abd er Rahman.
Occasionally cold shivers would chase each other up and down my back when the idea occurred to me that perhaps the camels I had sent with him might go lame, or that something else might happen to stop him from coming out with the water that we so badly needed.
To tell the truth, I was distinctly doubtful whether the caravan would hold out until we reached him; for in pushing out so far with such a limited amount of water at the worst season of the year, and in sending him back single-handed to bring out fresh supplies, I knew I had broken the first rules in desert travelling, by running a serious risk without water supply.
A journey on a fine night in the desert is always an experience to remember, and the almost perfect silence in which we marched made it more impressive than usual. Hardly a sound was to be heard beyond the gentle shuffling of the camels’ feet on the smooth sand, the soft clinking of their chain bridles, the occasional creak of a rope against the baggage, and the hollow splashing of the water to and fro in the half empty tanks. Now and then, when the camels slackened their pace, Musa would shout out to them, his voice breaking the silence with startling suddenness, or he would break into one of the wild shrill songs that the camel drivers sometimes sing to their charges, and the beasts would at once quicken their pace.
A long night march seems interminable. The slow, monotonous stride of the camels, regular as the beat of a pendulum, produces an almost mesmeric effect as one plods along, mile after mile, hour after hour, beside them over the dreary waste of starlit desert.
The most trying part of a night march is the period just before dawn. Then one’s vitality is at its lowest, and one feels most the fatigue of the long night’s journey. A great silence falls over the caravan at these times. The whole desert seems dead and unutterably dull and dreary, and nothing at all seems in the least worth while. As the dawn approaches, the desert appears to stir in its sleep. A slight freshness comes into the air. A thin breeze—the dawn wind—springs up from the limitless waste, steals softly whispering over the sands and passes sighing into the distance. The false dawn creeps up into the sky, and then, with a suddenness that is almost startling, the sun springs up above the horizon, the elongated shadows of the long line of camels appear as “purple patches” on the level sand of the desert, like those puzzle writings that have to be looked at edgeways before they can be read, and one realises all of a sudden that another scorching day has dawned at last.
CHAPTER XI
TWO days after leaving the pass on to the plateau we reached our rendezvous with Abd er Rahman, where to our intense relief we found him waiting for us.
We had all, I think, been dreading that something might happen to prevent him from bringing out our indispensable water supply. To me, at any rate, the possibility that he might fail us had been something of a nightmare—when one is feeling a bit run down by the hot weather and unsuitable food, problems of this description are apt to assume quite alarming proportions, especially in the long night marches in the hour or two before the dawn.