I had only the vaguest idea as to where the depot lay, but as I had to decide in which direction to go, I told them I felt quite certain that it stood west north-west—about half-way between the two bearings pointed out by the men. It was a mere guess, based on the assumption that they were neither of them very far wrong, but that their errors lay on either side of the true direction. As luck would have it, I was much nearer right than either of the others, a fact that greatly increased their respect for my knowledge of the nijem!
After marching for a couple of hours or so, Abd er Rahman peered for a moment into the distance and announced that he saw the depot ahead of us. Neither Abdulla nor I could see anything. After some difficulty, however, I managed to identify the object to which Abd er Rahman was pointing, but all I could make out was an indistinct and shapeless blur, dancing and continually changing its shape in the mirage. Abd er Rahman, however, was most positive that it was the goal for which we were making, and, as I knew his extraordinary powers for identifying objects in similar circumstances, we made towards it and found that he had been correct.
We rested in the depot until sunset. Just before starting, it struck us that possibly we might pass Ibrahim and Dahab on the road. The arrangement I had made with them was that, if they failed to see us before reaching the depot, they were to leave as much water there as they could and return at once to Mut. But I wanted to arrange some means by which they should know where we had gone in the event of their reaching the depot. A letter was the obvious method, but Dahab was the only man in the caravan who could read or write, and I was doubtful whether he would come out again, as I had told him not to do so if he got at all knocked up on the journey back to Mut. Ibrahim, of course, was wholly illiterate, like the other two Sudanese, so it was difficult to see how I could communicate with him, if he came out alone. Abd er Rahman, however, was quite equal to the emergency. He told me that he would write Ibrahim a “letter” that he would understand, and, taking a stick scratched his wasm (tribe mark) deeply into the soil, and then drew a line from it in the direction of Dakhla, the “letter” when finished being as follows:
, the mark
being his wasm. This letter, Abd er Rahman said, meant, “I, belonging to the tribe who use this wasm, have gone in the direction of the line I have drawn from it.” This important communication having been completed, we set out on our return journey.
CHAPTER XIX
WE travelled after the manner described by Abd er Rahman as that of the Arabs when in difficulties in the desert. We rested, that is, in the middle of the day, marching throughout the morning and through most of the night.