For most of the first day after leaving Qway, Abdulla kept turning things very slowly over in his “feeble head,” and, towards the end of the second day, it began to occur to him that Qway’s long delay in the depot was rather suspicious; so before proceeding any farther along his route, he thought it advisable to ride across and have a look at the old track he had made himself on his previous journey, to make sure that Qway was keeping to his share of the arrangement, by following it towards Jebel Abdulla.
On reaching his track he saw no sign of Qway having passed that way, so becoming seriously uneasy, he rode back along it hoping to meet him. At a distance of only about a day from Jebel el Bayed he found the place where Qway had turned back, which as he had told him he intended to go for another two and a half days farther, convinced him that something was very seriously wrong. He then apparently became panic-stricken and came tearing back along his tracks to make sure that we were coming out to meet him and that the depot had not been interfered with.
Qway, he said, had returned along his tracks for some distance, until he had got within sight of Jebel el Bayed, when he had turned off towards the western side of the hill, apparently with the object of avoiding the caravan, which according to the arrangement, he knew would be following Abdulla’s track on its eastern side.
It struck me that as Qway’s track lay to the west of our camp, the sounds I had heard during the preceding evening from that direction had probably been caused by him as he rode past us in the dark, so I sent Abd er Rahman off to see if he could find anything, while Abdulla and I packed up and loaded the camels.
Abd er Rahman returned in great glee to announce that I had been right in my conjecture, and that he had found Qway’s track; so we started out to follow it. To the west of the camp was a ridge of ground that lay between our position and Qway’s footprints, and this may perhaps have prevented my seeing him, and certainly would have made it impossible for him to see either us or our fire.
Qway had passed us at a considerable distance, for it took us twenty-one minutes to reach his trail, which shows the extraordinary way in which even the slightest sounds carry in the desert on a still night.
As we followed his track we discussed the position. It was clear that, as Qway, when he left the depot, only had five days’ water in the two small tanks I had given him, he would be forced before long to renew his supply from our tanks, as he had already been three days away from the depot.
Abd er Rahman, instead of making our depot at Jebel el Bayed, as I had told him to do, on account of it being such a conspicuous landmark, had, fortunately as it turned out, made it about half a day to the north of the hill, in the middle of a very flat desert with no landmark of any kind in the neighbourhood. When the tanks and grain sacks composing the depot were all piled up they made a heap only about three feet high and, as the sacks, which had been laid on the top of the tanks to keep off the sun, were almost the colour of their sandy surroundings, our little store of water and grain was quite invisible, except at a very short distance to anyone not blessed with perfect sight, and Qway was rather deficient in this respect. He would consequently experience very great difficulty in finding that depot, unless he struck our tracks.
SKETCH PLAN OF TRACK ROUND JEBEL EL BAYED.