 14. The Secret of the Sahara-Kofara by Rosita Forbes. Near the feeding ground are two large cisterns erected by order of Seyed el-Madi. When any of the Senusi family wished to travel by this route, water was sent on ahead and stored in the cisterns, near which there is a small shanty falling into disrepair. As a matter of fact there should undoubtedly be water at Mahimsa. It is the same sort of ground as at Butterfall and Zechar, and green bushes are plentiful and healthy. There is no rainfall and no dew to account for their existence otherwise. We also noticed a number of birds conspicuous among them, a gray and black variety larger than the Abu-Fasada. In the time of Seyed el-Madi slaves dug for water to a depth of twenty feet at the Mahimsa, without coming to wet sand, but since then no one has tried. On February 2nd we started north at 6.30 a.m., after a violent argument as to the best way of saving the camels. I wanted to follow the summer plan, start an hour before sunset, walk all night, and camp two hours after dawn. One can do much longer marches this way, but the Bedouins were reluctant to face the cold of the night. On the other hand Muhammad was desperately afraid of another sandstorm which would inevitably delay us. He therefore wanted to walk at least fifteen hours a day. It is an unfortunate fact that a camel does thirteen hours at a pace of four kilometers infinitely easier than ten hours at five. He is capable of plodding along evenly without halting for an indefinite time, but the slower he goes the longer he will last. Muhammad was a bad camel man, frightened of the desperately long route in front of him which had to be traversed in twelve days. He was anxious to push on it first in order to have something up his sleeve. Yet the loads, chiefly fodder and water, would grow lighter every day. I refused, therefore, to do more than twelve or thirteen hours a day, especially as our camels would not feed properly when it was dark and cold. The best way of traveling is to start at five a.m., barrack for a few hours at midday, feed the camels as the afternoon grows cooler, and walk late into the night. But it means a double loading, and we had not enough man or energy for that, so our beasts had to accustom themselves to feeding by starlight, night, and morning. That first day we had a cool wind, so we all walked cheerfully across the unbroken stretches of monotonous fawn sand. The world had become a level disc again, infinitely flat, its smoothness polished by the glaring sun till the mirage broke the edges, which seemed but a few yards away. I asked old Suleiman how he knew the way. You put Jedi over your left eye and walk a long way, thus, then you turn a little toward the Kibla, then walk still some more, and then, if all a wills, you arrive. It was not exactly a reassuring answer after Abdullah's vagaries, so I asked him where Jedi was at the moment. I don't know, he replied with engaging frankness. Where is she? I showed him by the compass, and he trudged on perfectly placidly, nibbling a date from the little store he kept tied up in a corner of his tattered journey. When the sunset had painted our narrow world flame red, and one by one the stars had come out to show how infinitely remote is that inverted bowl we call the sky, Muhammad pleaded for an extra spurt. Let us just put that star out here, just pointing to the brightest point in the west. Having noticed, however, that all the camels were stumbling and swinging out a line, I thought a race with the evening star would be a mistake, so I insisted on barracking. We made Nozareba, leaving the loads ready-coupled for the morning. We had taken very little hathab from the Mhamsa because of the weight, so our fire was of the smallest description and we should have been asleep in an hour, but for a prolonged dispute between Muhammad and Suleiman, as to the necessity of aggling the camels. They will not move, my son, said Suleiman. They are tired, like me, and I am an old man. Old, too, inexperienced, replied our polite retainer, but make my heart at peace by aggling them. And he related a lurid story of how seventy camels had stampeded midway on the Zegan route. They all reached Jallow safely, but some of the men, unexpectedly left to carry their food and water, died on the march. Suleiman was already rolled like a door-mouse between two hawias, so he appealed to me for support. Know you the saying of the Prophet, Uncle Suleiman? I asked. How a man came to him and asked whether he should aggle his camel, or put his trust in Allah? First, place the aggle on the camel, and then your trust in Allah, was the reply. Various grunts and roars mingled with my sleep told me that the guide had been impressed by my theological learning, and it seemed only a few minutes later that I awoke to the sound of Yusuf's voice. All to make you strong, are you ready for rice? Protesting that it must still be the middle of the night, I poked my head out of the flea-bag, dislodging a shower of sand from its foals. A few yards away was one of the odd, vivid little pictures that flashed suddenly into one's life, and that one never forgets. A crackling, scented fire, criminally large in the circumstances, threw a wavering golden circle in the midst of a flat, shattered sand, interminable, bornless. Against the brilliant stars a tall, white-robed figure was silhouetted, hands raised to heaven, wide-hood framing the stern, dark-featured face, intoning the dawn prayers. Alahu Akbar rang out with undaunted faith, with undimmed courage, to the one guide whom the Bedouin trusts who lead his laboring caravans through the desert and dune to the desired oasis. Inside the glowing brushwood, Suleiman bent double over a huge cauldron when notonously pounded the morning's acida, his long pestle moving to the rhythm of his quavering chant, while Amar huddled under his coarse jerd, stirred red sauce flavored with fil-fil. Use of splump face was set in immobile discontent against the flames, as, muffled in every conceivable garment and wrap, he methodically fed the fire, twig by snapping twig. White robes of fire and the paling stars, with a circle of camels looming formless and dark in the background, that was my picture. And then Yousef's cross voice spoiled it. The garba water is very bad, he said, the rice will be black. Malish, I shall not see it, I said, chivalry. But a few minutes later we tasted it, when the plump one, sleepy-eyed, shuffled across with a grimy frying pan. He had sand on his nose and forehead to show that he had said his morning prayers, but whereas the rest of the retinue devoutly bowed their heads to the earth three times a day at least, I always suspected Yousef calmly dabbling a little shingle on his face as he went along. The hard-boiled eggs gave out that day, so we had to drown the taste of the garba rice with sardines. Our midday meal now consisted of dates and a handful of bucktsum at, for we had been given a couple of bags of these hard, unleavened biscuits, slightly sweetened and flavored with caraway seeds, by the kindly equan of Taj. In the evening we shared a tin of corned beef. But alas our great support of the Tizer Boat journey had failed us, for the dates we had brought from Haware were too fresh, and they stung our mouths, blistering our gums, and reducing us to agonies of thirst. The water allowance was too small to allow of our drinking except in the morning and in the evening, so we had reluctantly to discard our dates. Yousef insisted on eating one only each day, because there is an Arab proverb, A date by the way, or a young girl smiling, makes a fortunate journey. We started at 6.30 a.m. on February 3rd, and walked till 7 p.m. when the whole party, men and camels alike, sat down and groan. It had been absolutely torrid without a breath of wind. The gearbuzz began to look distinctly thin, and the clank of the water in the faunities showed that a good deal had evaporated. Unfortunately it had been very cold after the sandstorm the evening before our departure from the Zekar well, and the camels had not drunk properly. Yousef had made gloomy prognostications most of the day, and when we came to a mound of sand which had drifted over a few old hobbyists thrown away by a former caravan, he poked them viciously. How many of our own shall we throw in this way? he asked of fate. There is no logic in desert weather. After midday heat we had a very cold night. I remember I ate my chilly dinner with my gloves on, and was not surprised to find there was frost, when a sudden storm of shouts and roars brought me rapidly out of my flea-bag, and I fell over the thermometer in the dark. The camels apparently had gone wildly mad, for in spite of their aggles they were all hobbling and hopping wildly around making immense noise, which the retinue were exceeding in their anxiety to drive the beasts away from our neatly arranged gear-buzz, protected, as usual at night, by a hedge of baggy saddles. February 4th saw us away by 6.15 a good effort, chiefly due to a loading race between Amara and Yousef against the guide in Mohamed. I think the former couple won, but all the loads were a little wobbly that day. A black duck flew low across our path heading north. It has gone into the upside-down country, said Suleiman, pointing ahead, and there, on the far horizon we saw pale dunes and ridges clear-cut, with violet shadows below peak and cliff. They looked but a few hours march away, and we were all immensely happy, though we knew they were more than a day's journey away. Then it was very hot, but Yousef, who always enjoyed a burning sun, took it upon himself to cheer up the whole party. When a camel lay down and groan, he carefully made a roll of toy asadas in the sand, modeling the little hole at the top for a sauce with infinite trouble. These are for him to eat, then he will be strong again, he said, smiling. When Suleiman complained of his eyesight, the plump one cried, I will ride ahead and see the way. And, mounting his stick, he gambled around, imitating every trick and gesture of horsemanship with perfect art. Finally, when the rest of us were so oppressed by the heat that we only wondered what we could take off next, we saw Yousef solemnly fill the skirt of his shirt with sand and begin sewing it like grain right and left. When on earth are you doing, you man? exclaimed Mohamed. The next traveler will find a patch of green grain and will be happy, he said placently. Nevertheless that night, when the elusive dunes had failed to materialize, even as shadows on the horizon, anxiety spread. Asanine balanced himself perilously upright on the back of the tibu beast, but could report nothing in sight, so consoled himself by remending his yellow shoes. All the afternoon there had been a dispute as to whether we should go east or west of certain invisible dunes, and the retinue disagreed violently as to how soon we ought to see these landmarks or in what direction they were. Therefore I was not surprised when I heard a bitter argument behind me. Reproaches were being hurled at Suleiman, who replied that he was old and could not see. He has lost the wailed Mohamed. We must stop. He cannot go on. Yousef joined in. Is he sure he has lost it? Thank you, man, let him think, I tell you. Ex-possulation and suggestion followed in loud chaos. I had coped with one such dispute on the morning when there should have been a ridge to the left and there wasn't. I determined that Asanine should struggle with this. Slightly deaf he was nodding over his shoemaking far ahead on the gray camon. I rushed up to him crossly. Get down at once, I urged, seizing the beast ruthlessly by the neck and feeling angrier than ever at the sight of Asanine's mildly surprised and protesting face, as he desperately clutched his boots and the nearest supporting rope in preparation to being forcibly barren. Pull yourself together. Suleiman has lost the way. They are all fighting desperately. If it's an important landmark he's missed, we had better wait till the morning. For heaven's sake, hurry. One anguished glance at the angry group in the rear who were all pointing backwards was sufficient to make Asanine swing off without question. I watched him literally propel himself into the argument, heard Wallahi furiously repeated his hands flung skyward, and then, surprised, saw him extricate himself from Muhammad's detaining hands and walked slowly back to his camel, methodically picking up the possessions he had ruthlessly scattered at my peremptory request. Well, what is it? What has he lost? I shouted impatiently. Asanine is wedded till he was quite near and then he gave me a withering look and said very slowly, each word enunciated separately. It is a small leather bag which the Qaimakhan gave him to sell in Jagabub. Suleiman has left it behind. On February 5th we broke camp at 6.30, singularly indifferent to coffee mysteriously mixed with candled rice and rice, harried with gerbifer in our anxiety to see the morning mirage. This time the dunes looked even nearer. One could see the wavy furrows along the ridges at every separate golden hillock, yet an hour later everything had vanished in the flat, fond disc stretched, grabbing monotonous on every side. Suleiman was confident, however, that we should sleep in the dunes that night. Yusuf was cheerfully certain that, as we had not yet seen the Mazul ridge to the west, we should not see land for another day. When Bedouins are traveling across a big, trackless desert, they always speak of any known country as the land. It is rather like a long sea voyage with a guide as the pilot. He keeps the carabine's head turned in the right direction by the stars and waits to pick up a familiar landmark before making directly for his oasis. At ten a.m. the old guide uttered something nearly resembling a shriek and threw himself on Yusuf's neck. I see the Mazul, he exclaimed, and it is near, very near. Leaving the pale line of distant hillocks to our left, we headed directly north towards other dunes which began to appear, a faint blur on the horizon. The two little nagas edged away to the west all day in the most determined way. Yusuf said they knew that their mothers, from whom we had separated them at Taj, were now traveling on the Zegan Jala route, and instinct was driving them towards the soldier-slave's caravan. The plump one's character always appeared to greater advantage in really hard times. When things were going easily, his scowl was a marvel of discontented endurance. His eyes shut into little slits, and his voice became a plaintive whine. When big difficulties arose, when camels were failing and everybody was overtired, Yusuf cheered up the whole caravan. His absurd little songs trickled out hour after hour. He told long fairy stories about giants and princesses. He made elaborate jokes which we daily received with new interest. Thus, if anyone lagged behind, they were always greeted when they rejoined the caravan as if after a long absence, upon which they replied that they had come from Jedabia or Jalo in two or three days, were congratulated on their walk, and asked minutely for news concerning every person in the place. This particular game never worried, and we all grew most inventive at the expense of the good folk at Jedabia. One would think that in thirteen hours' walk each day, one would find time for much conversation. But the desert breeds reserve. It is so big that one's own plans and projects seem too little to be talked about. Also, there is so much time to say anything that one continually puts it off and ends by never saying it at all. We used to walk for hours without a word till Yusuf broke the silence by some reflection on his approaching marriage or the sickness that he saw on some camel's eye. But this time I had learned how to make myself understood in Libya. The nouns are nearly all different, but after one has learned a list of those one gets on very nicely with but two verbs. To express any more or less peaceful occupation, like traveling, stopping, loading, unloading, letting fall, starting, etc. at infinitum, one employs the word shield. If one wishes to imply any more vigorous or offensive action, like fighting, attacking, climbing hurriedly, eating, burning, becoming angry, a call seems to be elastic enough to express it. We finally arrived at the dunes nearly two hours before sunset, luckily hitting two very big dunes that were well-known landmarks. Yusuf wanted to turn in behind them. Suleiman insisted on going on to the right, which brought us into a wide, flat stretch some 12 kilometers long. We barracked at the end of it, in a rising wind, which soon put out our little folding lantern so that we lost everything, including the tin opener in the dark. It was rather a miserable night, for the hat-hub we had brought from Mahemsa was exhausted, and our efforts to make tea over a little fire of leaf torn from one of the Hawias were not very successful. The water from the gerba we opened that night was really bad. Its color and taste alike were extraordinary, so we regretfully decided to use it only for cooking. Suleiman looked at it with interest. We have enough water, Hamdallula, he said, in any case I can live for a week without drinking. When we questioned him as to this amazing statement, he told us that Sidi El-Madi habitually sent out caravans to explore the country around Kufara. Suleiman, an old man and a boy, had formed one of these parties, and they had wandered as far afield as Murd, 13 days southeast of their starting point. When one dark night their camels were stolen by a band of brigands. Presumably something happened to the gerbas and provisions, for in the morning the exploring party found themselves with enough water and dates for a day and a half, and they were six days' journey from the nearest well, the Olunat. However the three started off to walk it, actually carrying their rifles. The old man got ill after one day and insisted on being left behind. After two days his first well companions discarded their rifles. After three Suleiman got fever and lay down to die, but the boy went on and arrived safely at the well. Our guide unexpectedly recovered from his fever after 24 hours and started off again walking only at night and lying down all day. He arrived at Olunat on the seventh day so exhausted and so parched with thirst that he could not get the liquid down his throat, so he lay in the water in the well for a whole day and was then able to drink. Luckily a caravan had thrown away some dates, and with a small store of thieves and a little water he could carry Suleiman calmly walked on to Kafara another week's journey. The old man who had been left to die on the road arrived a day later with his rifle. The feat seems inconceivable but use of vouts for the truth of the story, and Amar told how he had drunk only once in seventy-two hours when the water in the gerba went bad. Then Mohamed, not to be outdone in endurance, related how he had traveled from Jalo to Jagabub in four days and four nights without sleeping, eating as the camels went along because the gerbas were all leaking and he was afraid of running short of water. By this time we felt that our own little effort to draw a new red line across the survey map was very small and insignificant, and that we should certainly be able to walk to Jagabub carrying affanities and a tin of corn beef if necessary. We were much less confident of it next morning, however, when all the camels turned up their noses at the date food we offered them and deliberately ran away. There was nowhere for them to run to among the dunes, so we got them back after a laborious half-hour. But I felt that the word Agol and not Kufara would be written across my heart in the future. There was no fire that morning and uncooked, soaked rice is not appetizing. I remember I was tying the remains of my stockings around my feet when I heard a gloomy voice say, We ate the last box of sardines last night because you lost the beef tin opener in the sand and the rice is cold black. I wish you would not be so miserly with affanities water. I didn't pay much attention as I hadn't any more stockings. Evidently the primrose and scarlet boots which I had bought for four megeties, sixteen shillings, a joff, were not suited for walking, for I had been wearing two pairs of woollen stockings, one over the other, and now they all hung in shreds around my feet. However, I did look up when the plenty of tones continued. I found one sardine. He must have fallen out when you upset the canteen in the sand. With horror I saw a sudden, dark mass, and on the top of it a minute yellow block shaped like a fish, but I did not like to be discouraging. Are you sure that there is a sardine inside that sand, I asked diffidently. Hassanine was offended. Will you carve him or shall I? he asked ingestically. On February 6 we plunged right into the dunes. On the whole they ran north to south in great wavy ridges which would be impossible for camels to cross. In between were wide stretches of rolling ground rising gradually to lower dunes through which Suleiman confidently picked his way. The little old man was very calm. I have never been this route before, but if I keep Jedi in my left eye we shall arrive, inshallah, he said. And when Yusuf complained violently that there was no hat-hub, the retinue had eaten raw flour and water that morning. He answered simply, all I will bring provisions. A few minutes later we came upon a camel skeleton, a most welcome sight, for it proved we were on the right track. Inside the ribs were some large slabs of dried dung. Muhammad pulled us out triumphantly. A fire, a fire, I'm dalula. And therefore everyone was cheerful till Amar brought the news that Yusuf was ill. We had seen the plump one lie down some way in the rear, but thought he was only resting for half an hour, a thing we all did in turns. Only the difference between the nature of the east and west showed at these moments. For whereas the Bedouin slept peacefully in the rear and then ran after the camels, I used to toil on ahead and lay myself across the path of the caravan so that I must wake at its approach. It appeared that Yusuf had fallen down and then lost consciousness for about an hour. It was very lucky that he managed to catch up with the caravan at all. We mounted him on the tibu camel, which was the strongest of the caravan, but was already showing signs of thirst, and toiled on. It was much harder walking in the dunes, for the sand was soft and deep in patches, but the great curly ridges, gold in his Irish butter, which Yusuf always looked at affectionately, because they reminded him of his beloved Asida, were friendly spirits after the dreary disc of the preceding four days. It was always a thrilling moment when one mounted a high gird, for there was the possibility of a view. Logically, one could expect to see only waving yellow crests, a sunlit expanse of sand valley and mountain in every direction, but the impossible might always happen. One might aspire a caravan, or an oasis, or at least some hat-up. For this reason, we always hastened ahead up the big rises to look down on wind-tossed ranges, and toward the evening we were rewarded for our energy by the appearance of little black specks in one of the hollows. Hothob, said Suleiman, leconically. Yusuf recovered at the word, or perhaps it was the quinine which we had given him earlier in the day. We raced down to the brittle stalks of twisted, coarse-grained wood that meant fires and hot food that night, and everyone began to talk of what they would eat. Just after sunset, we came to an almost perpendicular dune which the camels refused to descend. We had to dig a sloping trough down it, and push the beasts into it one by one. Everybody was tired, and the camels were incredibly stupid. The young Nagas simply rolled down, flinging their loads in front of them, at which Mohammed lost his temper and made matters worse by violently beating the animals still hesitating at the top. They stumbled forward in a huddled mass, and I saw the gerb as threatened. Luckily the tibu beast was carrying most of them. He plunged solidly down on his great splay-feet, and I had just enough energy left to seize his head rope and drag him out of the chaos. We barrucked before our short-sighted guide could lead us over another such precipice, and because it was a joy to be wasteful of anything on that journey, we made no fewer than three fires, and recklessly poured everything we could find into the frying pan together. Rice and corned beef and tin turnips so that we ate a hot, very hot, meal. We even drank our one cup of tea hot, debating the while whether coffee were not preferable, for, though it made one thirsty, it somewhat hid the taste to the gerbo water. Everything by now tasted slightly a wax, for in the hot days all the candles had melted in the canteen. It is certainly possible to clean pots and pans beautifully with sand, but it needs a great deal of energy to do it, and I defy anyone to have any superfluous energy after loading and feeding camels before at twelve to thirteen hours march, unloading and feeding the tired and smelly beasts at the end of it, aggling them while they persistently tried to escape, preparing some sort of a meal, and then, worst of all, oh, intolerably worse, the sand rash that tortured our nights. Let no one who dreams of a poetic Swinburnean desert come to Libya. We had not washed anything but our hands since leaving Haware thirteen days before, and not even these since Zekarwell. Since then we had to add a sandstorm which filled every pore with minute grit, so that by day the irritation was just bearable, but at night, in the warmth and the restricted space of the flea-bag, it was a torture beyond belief. I used to feel that never, so long as I lived, would I be able to bear seeing water spilled or wasted. Fate had been cruel to us in one respect, for the day at the Zekarwell when we had dreamed of sandy baths in the canteen lid behind a friendly palm tree, she had sent us the first of our two sandstorms, so washing had been confined to a teacup for our fingers. One lay at night, sleepless and burning, and looked up at the eloof piece of the stars, and wondered vindictively how one could get even with the desert for this last trick of hers. Yet in the cold, still dawn, the desperate tiredness vanished, and one made a huge, unnecessary fire to breakfast buy, and ate black rice with immense relish. Yusuf was very proud of his skill as a cook, so we did not like to tell him of all the foreign bodies we found in our food, bits of leaf and straw from the baggage saddles, grit, hair, pebbles, and sand. It was the limion sauce, and I think Hassanine suffered much in silence, for it was his first desert journey, and he still hankered after clenderness. I used to find him desperately and secretly rubbing a plate with the corner of his muffler, or his best silk hankered chief, and whenever he was late for breakfast, I knew it was because he had been unwise enough to look at his cup or fork before using them. On our second day in the dunes, the flat spaces grew rarer, so that we climbed up and down ridges most of the time. The camels began to show signs of wear. One of the nagas trailed her head most of the time. The big blond beast had to be relieved of his load. They were all very smelly, which is the first sign of thirst. Luckily we found patches of green hot-hub, the prickly, juiceless bush of the hamsaw, scattered under the dunes, the animals raced to it, fighting for the freshest tufts. A margot fever and had to be allowed to ride. While I was so tired that I found a way of festooning myself over the pegs of the baggage-settles, my knees wound round one and my neck around the other. In this extraordinarily uncomfortable position I actually dozed while you supported beside me doubtfully. You are very long, he said politely. I think you will fall. And he tried to double up a dangling foot, much as if it was a piece of baggage slipping. I could not understand the presence of green bushes till I found my pillow that night wet with a heavy dew. Then I realized that we had left the southern lands behind us. And next day, February 8th, there were a few little clouds in the sky, just specks of fluffy white, but we had become used to the molten blue that roosts the red country of Kufara and her encircling wastes. That was, for me, the worst day. The little camels persistently threw their loads, ill-balanced because the fodder had become so much lighter. There was a cold east wind which blistered one skin on one side while the sun scorched it on the other. The camels would not keep together but straight off to each patch of green. The dune seemed steeper than ever and the sand softer and heavier. No one was sure of the way, even Suleiman was a little depressed at not picking up any of the landmarks he had known on previous journeys. He insisted on keeping his course due north, though we knew Jagaboo, lay northeast, and his only explanation was that it was easier to approach the place from the west. Logically, I thought it would be easier to strike east so that if one went past Jagaboo one would at least reach Siwa. To the west lay only the seven days waterless stretch to Jalo. However, Suleiman was immovable and we plotted weirdly on, placing one foot in front of the other with desperate firmness and flinging ourselves flat on our faces for a few minutes blessed sleep whenever the camels lingered to feed. I remember wondering as I dragged myself up after one of these short respits how many separate and distinct aches one body could feel at the same moment. I was getting quite interested in the problem when Hassanine's bronzed face, it seemed to have grown hollow these last few days, appeared beside me. He was painfully shuffling on blistered feet after a twelve hours walk the previous day. When we get to Cairo everyone will say what fun you must have had, he said, girly. Even this idea could not make me speak. I discovered it was easier to walk with my eyes shut, and so mutely I shuffled after the guide, dragging my stick till I dropped it and was too tired to pick it up again. Yes, it was a bad day, but it ended at last with a few patches of black pebbles, sure sign that we were nearing the northern edge of the dunes. Even the sand rash, combined with the most remarkable tasting dish produced by Hassanine's efforts to clean the frying pan, could not keep me awake that night, and I slept soundly, till Yusuf's plainty voice saying all in one breath, all to make you strong the fire is ready for the rice, rouse me to a starry world, and an exceedingly damp one. But I imagine these very heavy dues helped the thirsty camels considerably, so I didn't regret a wet barokon which twisted itself reluctantly around everything but me. February 9 was memorable, fron climbing the high dune under which we had camped. We saw a long, faint ridge, blue on the northeast horizon. Land at last, exclaimed Muhammad, it must be the mountain between Jagabub and Siva. Even this reassuring suggestion would not turn our guide from his northerly course, but signs that we were leaving the great desert abounded. So far, the only living things had been large, unpleasant beetles, mottled black and fawn creatures, some nearly four inches long, which looked like scattered stones till they suddenly raised themselves on long legs and scuttled away. At morning, however, we saw many black and gray birds, and at last, when the green patches of hatab been developed into large, brown-like shrubs and neat little dwarf trees, leafless and but two or three feet high, we came across gazelle traces. We also found two complete skulls for the tapering horns in perfect condition. The country was changing noticeably. The previous day there had been a few patches of the jagabub gray stone among the sand, the sight of which filled the retina with delight. On February 9, great blocks of it appeared in fantastic masses rising suddenly from dune and hollow. We noticed scattered pieces of fossilized wood, some of which appeared to have been parts of the trunks of big trees, stretches of what looked like black pebbles shimmered dark beyond the farthest ridge. Finally, Muhammad, mounting an immense, curly-backed sand peak at noon, tore off his turban, tied it around his staff, and, waving it bannerwise above his head, shouted wildly, I see my country, the land is near. The camels were the only indifferent beings in the caravan. They were too tired to quicken the pace, which had dropped at two miles an hour during the last day or two. They had got very thin with dull eyes, but luckily there was a slight breeze to relieve the intense heat which scorched us whenever we stopped for grazing in a hollow. There were streaks of white cloud in the pale sky, and I imagined a breath of salt flavored the northern breeze so that suddenly I was desperately homesick for the great free desert, lullous and boundless that we were leaving. Ahead were the comfortable lands where the nomads camp in their tattered nuggas, and the Bedouin pastor their herds, the Gebelakbar and Cyrenaica, the welcome of the tent dwellers, for all caravans who have traveled the big routes. Somewhere east of us, said the compass, north of us, said Suleiman, lay the last outpost of the wilderness, if not the birthplace at least the training ground of Senuciism. But the lure of space dragged one's mind back. The claw of the desert was tearing away the peace that should lie at a journey's end. I do not think I ever felt mentally flatter than when, just before two a.m., we passed through the last little hollow where green and gold were mixed, and the mighty belt of dunes lay behind us. In front was a most desolate country of gray slate, and streaks of white chalky sand and pebbles, with here and there a dull matter-gird or stony cliff. A faint thrill of interest was given to the moment by the fact that none of the retinue knew where we were. But as I was determined that east we should now go, whatever they said, it did not much matter. Suleiman climbed one dune and said we were between the hattias of Bu-Aliya and Bu-Salama on the Jala road. Muhammad climbed another and said that both these places were to the east of us. Yusuf lay down firmly on a soft spot and said that all known country was still to the north, and he was going to sleep till the guide found his head again. The happy-go-lucky Bedouin spirit had completely got possession of us, so no one was particularly surprised when, after an hour on the course insisted on by the compass and myself, we picked up a definite trail with some slabs of stone stuck upright as landmarks. As a matter of fact, we had struck the Jalo-Jagaba route rather more than a day's journey west of the latter place, but at the time nobody was certain as to our exact position. Amar, however, announced that undoubtedly Bu-Aliya lay behind us, and no sooner had the whole retinue agreed on that one point than the beginning of the Hattia of that name became visible a few hundred yards ahead. Hamd al-Lula, we shall camp tonight in our own country, exclaimed Muhammad, and hurried on the caravan in spite of use of expostulations. Gazelle tracks were now plentiful, and we tried to track down four in the hope of getting a shot, but Suleiman was nearly dead beat. The last word is in your hands, he said, but I am an old man and very tired. Let us bear a care. The Hattia was really awadi, stretching about five kilometers north to south, with a breadth of four kilometers. The whole space between the white shale and sandbanks was filled with mounds and shrubs of hadam, mostly green, while here in their massive blocks of grayish sandstone stuck up in strange shapes. As one wandered slowly through the low bushes, far away to the north a long, purplish ridge with a mound at the end shaped exactly like the dome of a mosque, cut the first red of the sunset. That is the gird of the quaba, exclaimed Yusuf, his round, tired face lighting up. And look, in front of us is the gara of Sidi El-Madi. At the farthest end of the Hattia was an immense block of red sandstone flung up by the hands of some forgotten giant upon a mighty base of polished white, so that it looked like a primeval altar to the gods of earth and sky. Here the Madi used to halt his immense caravans on the jallow journey, and under the shadow of the rough natural sanctuary pray for a prosperous venture or give thanks for a safe return. Even Suleiman spoke no more of barricade. Without a word spoken, everyone felt that the Maghrib prayers must be said where the spirit of the Madi would surely welcome travelers from the far off Oasis, whose red and amber he had changed to wealth of grain and fruit and flowers. The weary camels were hurried from their indifferent nibbling along the dry shrubs. When the full glory of the golden west lit up the strange altar, balanced between heaven and earth, and the faint silver crescent of a new moon glowed pale amidst the flame, we came round the corner of the rock and saw the simplest quiebla that ever the faithful turned towards the comma. It was but three great rough boulders with a circle of stones to mark the shape of an imaginary mosque. Yet it was holy ground, and we left our worn shoes outside before we bowed our faces to the desert sands. What prayers the stern Muhammad mixed in with his in the name of all a compassionate and merciful I know not. What simple thanksgivings were murmured by our weather-beaten guide, and if the young Zawiya student Amar grasped the perils from which he had been protected, if Yusuf's mind realized for one fleeting moment that there was something beyond his comfortable practicality, I cannot guess. But I know that never in my life have I offered more whole-hearted gratitude to the power that, called by many different names in many different cities, is omnipotent in the deserts. Chapter 15 of The Secret of the Sahara-Kufara by Rosita Forbes Chapter 15 The End of the Journey We camped that night at Bu Salama, the next Hatia on the way to Jagabub. The wood was too green to make really good fires, though Muhammad and Hassanine labored manfully in the sand. The rest of us were too tired to care what happened, provided we could lie down and not move for hours and hours. The gray camel evidently shared our feelings, for he had fallen in barricade. Amar hopping round him distressfully without making the slightest attempt helped the writer, called repeatedly on the name of Sidi El-Madi. It is amazing the complete faith every Senusi has in the spiritual and mental power of the Seids. Whenever the young Nagas ran away, old Suleiman used to stand perfectly still and repeat urgently, influence to the Sidi Idris, influence to the Sidi Idris. Once, while sleeping perilously in a more than usually odd position, I nearly fell as my camel stumbled down a dune. Use of muttered the name of every Seid living and dead to ensure my safety. I have never traveled in any country so united in devotion to its ruler as Libya. Resumably, Sidi Idris is somewhat less powerful than Allah in the eyes of the Senusi, but he is nearer at hand. Their confidence in his capabilities is so unbounded that it must occasionally embarrass the Seid himself, from curing a camel a thousand miles away to stopping a sandstorm, from conquering the world to producing a well where there is no water, all are within the power of the sun of the Sidi El-Madi. Our own prestige as friends of so important and pussant to personage was, therefore, considerably lowered when we humbly suggested that the retinue had better leave their varied armory in Jagaboo, as we could not guarantee that the Egyptian frontier authorities would allow them to intersewa. Yousef looked blank. But you will write a letter, he suggested. He knew the all-powerful, almost magical effect of a missive from Sidi Idris in Libya, and reasoned that his guests could surely arrange the simple affair of the rifles in their own country by putting pen to paper. When we confessed our impotence he entertained a gravest doubts as to our position and respectability. We had decided to send Muhammad on to Jagaboo before sunrise so that we might sleep next night in an house. Therefore, long after I had retired into my flea-bag, I saw Hassanine and Yousef struggling to shave our delightful retainer by the light of the campfire, with a safety razor blade held in a pair of pliers. Suleiman and Ammar offered interested suggestions, interspersed with remarks on the number of gray hairs which had resulted from the journey. In spite of the eight hours journey ahead, Muhammad donned his best clothes to present himself at the Zawiya where he had been educated. Therefore, I was surprised when Yousef started next morning in his ragged white shirt and patched waterproof. I always ride the last day of a journey, he announced firmly, depositing himself on the least weary camel. We broke camp at seven a.m. and straggled slowly by dreary gray-girds and uneven stretches of colorless sands and stones to a small Hattia, Mahathan, where a few palms grew among more fantastic boulders. The heat was intense as we entered a country of low white hillocks, with slabs of shale that made the camels stumble more than ever. But the in came with unexpected rapidity, for after the guide had told us under a noon sun that it was a long day's march to Jagabub, Yousef spied the white kebba of the Zawiya from her friendly gird. In a few minutes the whole round wadi spread before us, with its strips of scattered palms and brushwood, and beyond a line of square sandstone cliffs, the white walls of Jagabub, that looked so near and that took us more than two hours to reach. The home of Seedy Ben Ali is by far the most picturesque of the Senusi Oasis, for it is blinding white in the sunshine, a smooth polished cupola and tall madna, with the open arched gallery of Seedy Idris's house rising above the massive fortress-like walls of the Zawiya, all white, white as the windmills that look like marble pillars in the distance, or the pale sandbricks of the few big houses that surround the Zawiya. Jagabub is not a town in the proper sense of the word. It is one immense building with thick, windowless walls surrounding a maze of courts, passages, schools, lodgings for students, the big houses of the Senusi family, and the large mosque and kebba of Seedy Ben Ali. It stands on a cliff from which flights of steps lead down to palm gardens, and the one big well that supplies water to the whole settlement. Outside the mast, many storied buildings of the Zawiya are a few scattered houses, but Jagabub is a university, pure and simple. When Seedy El-Madi removed his headquarters to Kafara, he freed half a hundred slaves, giving them the gardens that they cultivated, and ordering that their rights should be respected by his successors. So now there is a colony of these liberated blacks who live among the palms in the Wadi. They work hard in their vegetable gardens, which are irrigated by an excellent system of channels and reservoirs dependent on the spring below the Zawiya, and they sell their dates and produce to the college. Two of the students met us halfway across the Wadi with a note from Muhammad, saying that rooms were being prepared for us in the Zawiya, and use of promptly proceeded to change his clothes. He tore off his tattered shirt, bearing a muscular brown torso to the public gaze. He produced a mysterious bundle from a sack on my camel and shook from it embroidered waistcoat, silk-jured, yellow shoes, and immaculate white linen, all of which he donned as we walked along. When the white walls were very near, we fired our revolvers into the air to announce our arrival, and Muhammad came out to meet us, smiling broadly. We passed through a big white arch into a wide open space with a well in the middle, round which were clustered groups of students who gave us warm greeting. To the right rose the solid, castle-like wall of Sidi Idris's house, whose gallery on the other side looked down onto a beautiful square court of the Quba, with its wide arched and columned arcades. The facade near the square is pierced by a few shuttered windows and the carved main door through which one goes to the Quba court. To the left the square was bordered by a row of neat little round lintel doors, each with a slit of a window above it, the lodging houses for the students. A big two-storied house rose beyond and, at the door of this, we were met by a delightful old man with pale, thin face, a long beard as white as his wool endured, or the colorless walls behind him. Greeting to you in the piece of Allah, he said, and led us into a dwelling more complicated even than the Kaymakan's house of many courts at Taj. We went up and down little flights of steps, which seemed to exist without reason, under low arches by odd little passages and mud-floor yards, till a longer staircase led us to a flat roof, a cross which we followed our hosts to a large, high room matted and carpeted, but devoid of furniture. For the first time I lived in an Arab house which had a view from the windows, for here there was no yard to shut one into a mysterious little world of secluded privacy. From the cross-barred windows with swinging shutters, one looked down on the big square and the white figures gossiping around the well, or across to the group of our weary camels, literally bulging after their enormous drink. Two students seated at the doors of their rooms with Koran and Rosary. Our host, Sidi Yadam Bugamira, one of the important equan, was so anxious to hear the complete story of our journey that he would not leave us before we had drunk sweet coffee, seated on his best carpet, and answered all his questions as to why we had come from Qufara by such a hard route. Before we had satisfied his kindly curiosity, Sidi El Fagel, plump and ebony-faced with graying mustache, the Imam of the mosque, and other equan had hurried to visit us. I was so tired I could hardly hold up my head. My nose was blistered and peeling, my face burning, my eyes watering. I was intensely hungry. Every nerve seemed to be throbbing and aching, and above all I was conscious of dirt. I felt completely vague as I leaned against the wall, and when a murmur of voice as below suggested the possibility of other visits, I basically left Hassanine to entertain the venerable equan and crept down a discreet little stairway to a quaint shaped room that lurked under one of the innumerable archways forgotten, I think, by the architect, who must have had a most tortuous mind. It was full of dust and clay, but I felt a little more dirt did not matter, and here I was found by the kindly Yusuf, when the last visitor had gone, fast asleep on Hassanine's grimy jerk. The sit Karajah must eat, he said. The wakil of Sidi Idris has sent you dinner. The magic word roused me in the sight of a gleaming brass tray set on a little table six inches high in the middle of our unbroken sea of carpet finished the cure. When we lifted the palm leaf covers from the bowls, we found eggs, pigeons, and vegetables cooked in wonderful savory sauces, with piles of most delicious bread, brown and flaky. But alas, every cunning sauce was so impregnated with red pepper that we had most gingerly to remove the pigeons and dust them carefully before eating, after which we regretfully deposited a just proportion of the rest of the meal in a carefully prepared hole in the backyard, lest the feelings of our host be heard. We had just removed all traces of our villainy when he appeared to drink tea with us. Sidi Isain, the wakil, was of all the hosts who generously entertained us on behalf of the sads, the most delightful, because he was the most simple. Jagaboobe is not a political or mercantile center like Gufara or Jawa. It has all the dreaming peace of a little university town, only its dons or reverend gray bearded cheeks and flowing white jerds over grass green or indigo blue robes. Its undergraduates are graver figures with books and beads than those of Trinity or the House, while the scouts, I suppose, are the black slaves of hideous aspect who live in a special court of the Zawia. But I feel sure they are more industrious and certainly more frugal than their English counterparts on the banks of the Isis and Cam. Sidi Isain made tea with the formality as deliberate as that of the chimicon at Taj, but his conversation was much less ceremonious. There was no rigid etiquette observed in a series of questions and answers. For once the undercurrent of suspicion and unrest was absent, and we curled up our mental antenna with a feeling of complete peace. The little town, so aloof from the world in its occluded wadi, yet the nursery of a great confraternity, where still is nourished a force whose influence has felt all along North Africa, wished us well. A very intimate friendliness pervaded the gathering in the semi-gloom of the candlelit room. The wakil's huge beard flowed gray and soft over dark jubba with a many-colored waistcoat beneath. But there was no lavish display of silk or embroidery because the equan of Jagabub are more devoted to learning than to luxury. We are poor men who spend our time in prayer, said one of them with the utmost simplicity and a dreamy look in his faded old eyes. Their great pride is their queba, and a reflection for this homage showed in Yusuf's face when, the night after our arrival, just as they had finished scrubbing off the first layer of grime and wondering if I could decently ask Amar to heat another quarter-two of water, he arrived for the guttering candle to suggest that I should go at once to see the sanctuary. There will be no people there at this hour, he said. But when we had crossed the starlit square and left our shoes inside the first arcade of the mosque, we heard a low monotonous chanting coming from the shadows beyond the great white court. It was in keeping with a solemn spirit to the night, and the scene and the proud happiness and use of space as he led me through long, dim ways which he trod unfaltering, back again in imagination in his boyhood's days, when perhaps he had been as earnest and devout a learner as the grave-faced students who passed us in the square. Through a fine carved and painted door we passed into the mosque, very quiet, white and dignified, the dark carpets on the floor, the only rich note to break its utter simplicity. The silence began to beat on my eardrums with the impression of so many prayers, hopes, resolves, fervently uttered by youth in these low aisles, remembered again by age when it revisited the earliest center of its faith. Use of did not break it, eyes bright with a light I had never seen in them before, he beckoned me on into the quaba itself, and we stood in a painted chamber, ornate with gold and many colors below the big dome, hung with huge, finely molded glass lamps. I murmured swift Arabic prayers before a squared grid of carved bronze that surrounded the tomb of the great seducie. I was afraid even the whisper of the Fatha might hurt the silence, for our footfalls were muffled by thick, piled carpets. But the man whose mind I had always imagined, fixed on things of the earth, earthly, shattered it with a sudden sound, half cry, half groan, as he meant passionately to kiss the rail, and afterwards the hand with which he had touched it. In the morning, after an excellent but peppery breakfast brought by Mabruk, a hatchet face slave whom we used to watch running across the square with a bowl into which he poked a surreptitious finger at our door to see if it were still hot, I went again to the mosque and saw other seducie tombs. I found the wide white arches had much charm by sunlight, but I never again caught the mystic spirit of the night when the living force of Islam had flamed for a second before my eyes. Yusuf proved an excellent guide to Jagaboum. With intense pride he took us through the maze of college buildings, pointing out the house of each of the seducie, Sidi Rita, Sidi Idris, Seyed Ahmad Sharif, Seyed Hilal, and Seyed Safi El-Din, which make a massive block around the white quaba. In the big open square where the pupils of the Zawiya lads, he announced, Will each of us have a house here? Amar has one, I have one. We can come back whenever we like. It is our own country. Thus the Zawiya's hold their pupils long after they have gone out to the cities and deserts. The portly equam, the prosperous merchant, the Bedouin sheik, or the wandering scribe, may turn into the Zawiya where he has been educated, sure of finding a room and a welcome. Even the chance traveler may claim three days of hospitality of the seducie, and the poorer he is, the more generous it will be. We spent two days in the high tower above the square, talking simply about simple things for the equan, doctoring some of the students with pathetically inadequate remedies, exchanging the gossip of Kufara for that of Egypt with a few westbound merchants. Then we set out on the last stage of our journey, determining that for once we would travel slowly and peacefully, grazing the camels as we went, riding a little by night for the sheer joy of the stars and barricading to make mint tea whenever Ahatya tempted us with its wood and chain. Fate must have laughed in her sleeve, but no echo of her mirth reached us as we loaded our four camels inside the Zawiya walls, or paused beyond the first gird while city ha-sine said the Fatha. I only realized that this was the last Arabic blessing that would attend my journey, and I suddenly felt heart-sick for the land I was leaving. The white clustered walls, the white quoba behind, stood for the effort we had made, the object we had struggled for, far more than Kufara itself had ever done. Muhammad was really broken down by the journey and unable to come on with us, so with this little land of hope and fear, success and failure, with these winter months of high-pitched excitement and tense endurance, we were losing a friend. An odd pain possessed me as we finally parted in fine whirling sand, and a wind which blew as jerked wildly about his face, and when use of said complacently, the setkata ja is happy she will be in her own country soon, I knew the desert had won after all. Those who were initiated into her secrets are forever held in her thrall. I think my voice was rather wobbly as I answered. No, no, I am sad because I am leaving the Senusi country behind. So quick as the Arab sympathy, so responsive as their instinct, that use of space reflected my woeful expression. My heart was touched, he confided to Ammar. I would have wept with the setkata ja because she has many feelings. There was a strong northwest wind that day, but it was behind us, so we rode slowly and placidly through the distorted country of sand and shale that lies east of Jagabur. I do not know whether sporty giants dig for treasure or young gods build play castles and entrenchments in that desolate land, but on every side rise fantastic shapes of wind-blown sand. Ready slayers drip over polished white bases that look like chalk. Ridge after ridge of storm-polished goods shut one into a maze of strange hillocks that give way occasionally to welcome green of Hathias. The retinue had shrunk to three. Yusuf, Ammar and a new guide, one Abu Bakr Monti who looked exactly like the wicked Caliph in Dulak's illustrations of the Arabian knights, for he had a huge beak-nose which, under an immense, loosely rolled turban, curved to meet his pointed beard and nutcracker jaw. His curious eyes were forever asking questions, but his dialect was almost beyond my comprehension. We proceeded very slowly because all the camels were tired and the retinue had surreptitiously added to their loads immense earthenware jars to fill with oil at Siwa. But it did not matter, for this was a friendly desert, generous silver wood and water. We halted at El Amra where the Monti had built two great sisters some fifty feet long with domed roofs through holes in which the water drips into the immense chamber below. Abu Bakr made tea with a swiftness suggesting that his Caliph ancestor had bequeathed to him the services of his familiar genie. Then we proceeded slowly, walking and riding alternately another twelve kilometers to Makta, where we turned the weary camels loose to graves and cooked our rice and deseeded, respectively, under a delightfully sweet-scented bush, while inquisitive blackbirds with impertinent white patches over their bills hopped cheerfully around us. In red mist of sunset we started to reload, noticing that Abu Bakr carefully joined his Asser, Fager and Asher prayers into one unending stream in order to avoid having to do any work. A golden crescent lighted the white world as we left the Hatia, laboring through the sabaka, with great dunes looming on our right. I felt infinitely at peace in the shimmering, silvery stillness, the silence only broken by the soft, padded padding of the camels, or use of sudden wailing chant in praise of his beloved Qaba, white as the breast of a virgin. The desert was in her most magical mood, and I longed to turn south again and ride back into her bornless country by the pale light of Jetty and Suhail. Then a strange murmuring sound arose in the dunes. It was as if a great wind bore the humming of a myriad monstrous bees. The gins are awake tonight, said Yusuf, fearfully. Something evil will befall us. They are making a great noise in the sands. I laughed at him and wondered if it were the throb of the breeze reverberating to the empty oil jars, or if we were so near civilization that an aeroplane had become a possibility. Then I remembered the desert drums of the French Sahara, for which no human fingers are responsible, and I wondered if, when one is very near akin to the spirit of the earth, one can hear the beat of her pulse. I turned on my big blond beast to ask Hassanine what he thought of the strange throbbing, and instead of a crouched figure swaying monotonously on the gray tibu, I saw a heap pick itself briskly from a patch of stones. I think I have broken my collarbone, said a calm, laughing voice. You wouldn't say it quite so happily if you had, I grunted, with memories of hunting falls. Perhaps not, replied my companion, clambering back onto his camel. All the same there's a most enormous lump, I believe I have. And though the voice still laughed, I grasped suddenly that it spoke disastrous truth. Camels were roughly barren. Yusuf, for once bereft of speech, stumbled round mutely offering most of his clothing as bandages. Abu Bekker, practical and brutal, wished to massage the lump as a sprain. I blessed for once the cumbersome length of the red hezham. Bandages and sling it made at the same time, and left an end over to fix a cushion under the armpit. All the time Hassanine was cheerfully explaining that the tibu had thoughtlessly stumbled just as he was practicing gymnastics in order to extract a blanket from some mysterious recess among the baggage sacks. But we gave him short time for talk. We hustled him into a roughly made bassoor, and a pitiful little procession started off again, for suddenly the silver night had become desperately lonely, the drumming of the gin, the sinister and the trail to Siwa, with half-exhausted camels and none too willing men, a thing of intolerable length. Thereafter our journey was just the chronicle of a very gallant feat of endurance. The golden sickle died behind us, but we plotted on. No longer were the eighty-five kilometers in front of us a friendly desert to be traversed slowly and comfortably. At all costs we must reach Siwa and a doctor before the fractured bone broke the skin and set up mortification. The greatest difficulty was the retinue, who could not believe that the Ahmed Bay who laughed at them and urged them to sing could really have a broken bone. It is a little sprain, said Yusuf, hopefully. We will make a fire and massage it with oil of jasmine, and it will be cured. But I drove them on, unrelenting, till the rough ground west of Kusabea made the camel stumble hopelessly in the darkness. I hated Abu Bekhar when he calmly lit himself a fire, and, warming his feet at the blaze, started chanting the Koran in a loud, exasperating voice. We could not get the unfortunate Asanine into a flea-bag, and no position we could devise could give rest to his shoulder, already jarred by the unending bumps and jerks of a camel's pace. All we could do was to pile our cushions and blankets under him and cover him with a sleeping sacks. Yusuf toiled nobly, and in the cold night which followed, during which Abu Bekhar was the only one who slept, I heard him come shuffling several times to see if he could help. Never was a dawn more welcome, but as we helped my infinitely plucky companion onto a camel, waiting for no breakfast except coffee made overnight in a thermos flask, I wondered whether human endurance could last out another forty-eight hours like this. The shoulder was already inflamed and the ground terribly rough, so that every few minutes the rider was jerked and jolted painfully. We passed the blue salt lake of Kusabea, a strip of color on our left, and clambered down into the Hatia where the camels had to be turned loose to graze. We found a palm clump and cooked rice in the shade, and Hassanine's smile grew a little more twisted in spite of my best efforts with bandages and slings. I would hardly allow the retinue to finish their noisy gulps of tea. What does it matter if you were tired of flinging at them? That bone has got to be set to borrow night. Three and a half days from Jagabub to Siva, said Yusuf mournfully, we would walk with you all night, but the camels will not go. They have got to go, I said sternly, but I knew that our animals were very nearly exhausted. They had come more than a thousand miles with periods of overloading and insufficient food. For nearly three months they had had no rest but the eight days at Kufara, and we had always hoped to leave them at Jagabub to recuperate. Unluckily there was not a single beast of burden in the Zawiya to take us on, so we had to pick out the four least weary camels and trust once more to luck. That afternoon was one of the longest I have ever spent. When I saw Hassanine put away his compass, I knew that things must be pretty bad and the fantastic hills were a tortuous maze through which we wandered eternally. Yusuf pointed out the grid, a group of three guards which might serve to support the cooking pots of the largest giants. We shall camp at Zaizab, be said, and I prayed that it might be near. Allah alone knows how far it is to that hadiyah, said Abu Beker placently. As we mounted it seemed to me for the millionth time a little rise and saw nothing below but reddish sand over hard white blocks in monstrous forms that suggested beasts and edibles to the fanciful Amar. Hassanine was the last of us to fall into silence. The sunset, without showing any signs of the promised hadiyah, the camels were obviously incapable of going much farther. Yusuf said pathetically, I have walked seventeen days from Qufara on these legs and now they are very tired. But Hassanine said nothing. Only when I climbed a huge mound of stones beside the track and saw the hope in his face as I looked across a great expanse of broken country I could not resist the impulse. I see the hadiyah, I lied. It is quite near. Darkness came as we jolted down into the wadi. In every rolling stone every sudden drop made me realize that two more days of this would be impossible. The swift appearance of the hadiyah almost justified my impulsive speech, but it was very dark as we barriced behind a convenient mound. I insisted that food should be eaten quickly and that we should then walk till the moon went down. The retinue expostulated violently. You must leave some of the load, said Yusuf, and Abu Bekker so firmly ensconced himself in his blankets that I thought a concerted mutiny was probable. However, after a forlorn meal, for even my companion's unfaltering courage could not hide his pain, I literally pushed the retinue on to their feet and by dint of doing half the loading myself forced them to prepare for another march. Hassanine dragged himself mutely on to the gray T-Boo, still far the strongest of the Hamla, but when I saw the party crawl away from our camping ground I knew that I could not force the pace any longer. On the morrow I would put up the tent and leave my companion there with Yusuf and Amar. I would take the Khufara camel and Abu Bekker, who, for love of heavy megeties, would guide me in one long march to Siwa, from where I could bring back help. This is the end, I said to Yusuf, pull up your energy. And then, Ham de Lula, a dog, ran out barking and figures loomed in the shadows. Friend came the answer to Amar's challenge. No friend walks thus at night, said Yusuf decidedly, and to me, get ready your revolvers. But I had heard an English voice, rushing forward, unheeding of ungirdled barricade, of Muslim custom, of anything in the world but that the hands of my own countrymen could help us as no other hands in the world, I met a camel-core patrol which the frontier district's administration had sent out to look for us. I have absolutely no recollection of what I said to the calm-eyed shadow and khaki, who drew away from the dark figures in close rolled turbans in the precise double-roll of neatly barricaded, but oh, the efficiency of England! I have railed at her so often and with so much justice. I have run away from her powers that be when I have wanted to penetrate to particularly unauthorized and impossible places, but that night I valued her as never before. In so few minutes the situation changed. Did I relinquish my command, or was it unconsciously taken from me by beneficent khaki? I do not know, but the retinues grumbling sank to odd silence at the power which had leaped to meet us. The hamla were driven on to camp at a given place, and the swiftest hegen went back to Siwa, untiring through the night to fetch a doctor and cart a gerba, only half a day ahead. Fate had played against the kindness of an English governor then at Siwa, for the rescue party had camped but a couple of hundred yards from our distressed dinner, and she had lost because the wandering dog had heralded our approach. Otherwise we might have drifted on into the night. Almost before I realized how life had changed, I found myself on a white trotting camel with especially immense sheepskin testifying to a very gracious forethought. Beneficent khaki was beside me, and behind me, a swiftly broken camp, the still glowing ashes of the fire, and then a line of dark figures on the slender hegen of the camel-core. It seemed so small a thing now that distances that lay before us, and even the long trail behind us was suddenly of no account, for we talked of world wars of nations still in the melting pot. How eagerly I asked for news. Governments had fallen, a new republic had sprung into existence, a famous general had vanished with a great army. Long before I had filled the gap those desert months had made in newspaper knowledge, we had overtaken the Hamla, and beneficent khaki was looking out for convenient shelter. The lee-side of a gurd, I think, he said firmly, that big fellow over there will do, any wield as tall white beast sharply under the hill. So swiftly the camp was made. I felt ashamed of our clumsy loading, our lumbering halts, when I saw the ease with which each tall hegen barracked in its own place in the double line. What a good thing it is to belong to such a government, said use of enviously. What fine camels and what a good turnout. There was no grumbling at making a зарiba that night. A meek retinue bestirred themselves mightily to little effect, but beneficent khaki took charge. Marvelously soon, it seemed, Hassanine was tucked into a wondrous fleabag, complete with sheets, a real pillow propped up his shoulder, a thoroughly windproof sariba shed out northern blasts, a fire blazed cheerfully before us and, as I tugged my own roll of bedding near its happy crackling, a voice said reproachfully, You mustn't do that, do remember that you've got lots of people to do it for you now. I smiled for I had almost forgotten the ways of England. Hot tea, said the same voice, with milk, and I noticed an enormous kettle on the fire. Mugs came from a magic picnic basket filled with all sorts of good things. Rugs and sheepskins appeared from the spare camels brought for our writing. Was there anything that Frontier District's administration could not produce at a second's notice? Then someone said, Sausages, and even Hassanine was enthusiastic. We cooked them with tomato sauce on the scented brushwood fire and ate them steaming hot, with white new bread from the hospitable basket, and then how we talked. Beneficent khaki smoked a pipe, and we, blissfully indifferent to the stern, snusy laws which had forbidden us tobacco for so many weeks, saw visions and dream dreams in the blue haze of our first cigarettes. It must have been nearly 2 a.m. when we finally buried ourselves in our flea bags, but no one slept. Hassanine, because of his broken bone, beneficent khaki because he had been too recklessly generous in the disposal of his own blankets, and I, because the great adventure was ended. I lay on my back and looked at the stars, weighing the balance of success and failure, and suddenly I felt that this was not really the end. Sometime, somehow, I knew not where or when, but most assuredly when all a-willed, I should come back to the deserts and the strange uncharted tracks would bear my camel south again. For those who like to know the end of every story, be it said that the efficiency which had taken possession of us did not relinquish its grasp until it had deposited us, bewildered, and hopelessly out of place in the hotel at Alexandria after a 430-mile motor-drive from Siwa. It was complete to the last detail. Hot teas steamed beside our flea-bags before the dawn brought us out of them. At a pace which would have made light of the long trail to Zakhar, we trotted on to the Hatia at Gerba, where, under the largest palm, waited a doctor, complete with aluminum fittings. The cars arrived exactly at the correct moment. The road to Siwa was unexpectedly smooth and, oh, how hot and plentiful was the bath-water at the rest-house. There I discarded my worn barracan with a sigh of relief, yet as I wandered through the honeycomb of old Siwa, with its close piled houses one upon another and its labyrinth of dark tunnels that serve as streets, I was ashamed before the gaze of Arabs. It seemed to me intolerable that a Muslim should see my face unveiled. Instinctively I pulled at my hat-brim and my flying cloak, for, curiously, the soul of this people had become mine, and I resented the lack of privacy till I remembered that the sit-karajah was no more. Once again we spent a night in the desert, but this time in the shelter of a tarpaulin hung between two FDA cars, which were to take us to Matra, and it was a tame desert with friendly caravans passing and newly sunk cisterns to prove the enterprise of its governor. Yet the silvery moon was the same that turned the Hawari sands to molten amber, scarred with the sapphire of her palms, and I crept beyond the shelter and the comfort to watch the setting of the star that Muhammad had always wanted to put out. Worm, congratulations on your success, said generous-hearted official doom at Siwa and Matra, and the more-than-kindly welcome was our best reward. So you have been to Kafara, said a civilian on the coast. It is an island, isn't it? But I always thought it was spelt Corfu. Then I met a pretty English woman. The stripe in her skirt matched her French sweater and faint scent to the millefleurs drifted from her rose-pedal skin. My nails were broken, my nose blistered. My only European dress had been hidden for months at the bottom of a sack of bully beef tins, yet was I sincere when I echoed Hassanine's vicious civilization, Hamdallula, as he stuffed his kufia into a corner of his knapsack and pulled out a fez. Daba'ah, February 19, 1921. End of Chapter 15 Recording by Stephen Seidel End of The Secret of the Sahara Kufara by Rosita Forms