At our last noon halt before reaching the bushes I overhauled the caravan. With the exception of the one big camel the whole of the beasts by this time were in a deplorable condition. My hagin was so weak that he was unable even to carry my hurj. Another brute that Abd er Rahman called the “rather meskin” (feeble) camel, was very emaciated; while one that he called the meskin beast, par excellence, was so excessively attenuated, that, in the photograph I took of him, only the desert appeared!
It was the big camel that pulled us through. The loads of the meskin and the “rather meskin” camels were both put on to his back, in addition to his ordinary burden, and my hurj was added to the pile. Moreover, whenever any of us wanted a lift we rode him—and he seemed to like it!
Ibrahim was two days overdue, and, as nothing had been seen of him, I was beginning to feel rather anxious and to fear he had passed us in the dark without our seeing him. During one noon halt, however, Abdulla, who was still rather jumpy, raised the alarm of haramin (robbers). We immediately collected our ironmongery and turned out to receive them. But to our great relief we found it was only Ibrahim approaching with three camels and another man.
Dahab and one of my camels, we found, had knocked up on the journey to Mut and had had to be left behind. It had taken Ibrahim two days to get more beasts and someone to fill Dahab’s place. The new-comer was an elderly Sudani, who had been at Qasr Dakhl with two camels on Ibrahim’s arrival at Mut. He went by the name of Abeh Abdulla.
I was considerably prejudiced in his favour by hearing him invoke the aid of a certain “Sidi Mahmed,” or Mahmed ben Abd er Rahman Bu Zian, to give him his full name, the founder of the Ziania dervishes, a branch of the great Shadhlia order, that plays the rôle of protector of travellers. It is, I believe, better known in north-west Africa than on the Egyptian side. In the Western Sahara “Sidi Bu Zian,” as he is sometimes called, may almost be termed the patron saint of wayfarers in the desert.
Abdulla, when he got into difficulties, used to invoke a certain “Sidi Abd el Jaud,” whose identity I was never able to discover.
Ibrahim had done his job splendidly. During the two days in Mut, he had had the leaking tanks repaired and had borrowed some others from the native officials. He had brought them all out filled to the brim. We watered all the camels, and, when we had given them time to absorb their drink, made a fresh start for the bushes.
When we reached Mut it was evening, and I walked to my lodgings through the quaint old town, stumbling over the uneven surface of the tunnelled street, whose darkness in the gathering dusk was only broken here and there by a gleam of firelight, through some half-opened door. The familiar smell of wood fires, whose smoke hung heavily in the streets, the scraping drone of the small hand-mills that the women were using to grind their flour, and the monotonous thudding as they pounded their rice inside their houses, had a wonderful effect in making me feel at home.
Soon after my arrival the usual boring deputation of the Government officials turned up to felicitate me in conventional terms on my safe return. After thanking them for the loan of the tanks, I asked the mamur whether anything had been heard of Qway. He professed to a total ignorance on the subject and wanted to have full details of what he had been doing. I gave him an account of Qway’s conduct as shown by his tracks and the empty tanks and asked, as he had nearly done for Abdulla, that he should be immediately arrested.
The mamur hesitated for a moment, then burst out with a passionate “Never! Qway is a gada” (sportsman). I pointed out the gada had, at any rate, walked off with a rifle and telescope of mine, and that I felt certain he had come into the oasis and was hiding. The mamur did not think he was hiding, but that he would turn up as soon as he heard I had got back—and anyway he declined to send out men to look for him or to have him arrested. I insisted that it was his duty both to find and arrest him, and, after a considerable amount of pressing, he at length gave way to the extent of promising, if Qway did not turn up, to send a man to look for him “the day after to-morrow.”