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.

To make quite sure of our water supply, I sent Abd er Rahman back again to Mut with all the empty tanks, telling him to come out again to meet us as soon as possible.

Our supplies of all descriptions were running short. Our firewood was almost completely consumed, our last match had been struck and, as my flint and steel were lost, getting a light was a matter of considerable difficulty. A fire was not only a necessity for the men to cook their bread in, but the whole caravan—with the exception of Qway—were confirmed smokers, and if a native is deprived of his tobacco he becomes discontented at once.

Musa had solved the difficulty of getting a light the evening before by tearing a piece of rag from his cotton clothing, rubbing it in gunpowder, and then firing it from his gun. Qway rushed forward, picked it up still smouldering, put it into a handful of dried grass which he had brought with him, fanned it into a flame, and by that means succeeded in lighting a fire from the last of our fuel.

The weather was very hot in the middle of the day, and I was considerably amused at the expedients that the men adopted to mitigate their discomfort. In the morning and afternoon, during the hot hours, they all tried to walk as close as they could to the camels, so as to be in their shadows. But when it became nearly noon, and the sun was almost vertically overhead, they threw the tails of their long shirts over their heads, which not only acted to some extent as a protection to their necks and spines, but also, by deflecting the wind, caused a draught to blow down their backs.

The men, hungry and surly, tramped along in silence for two or three hours. Then Qway, who as usual was riding ahead of the caravan, suddenly made his camel kneel, sprang to the ground and sang out to the others to join him. I called out to know what was the matter.

“_Tahl_,” he shouted, “_Tahl ya farah. Allah akbar. Allah kerim. El hamdl’illah. Barr_.” (“Come, come. Oh, joy! Allah is most great. Allah is merciful. Praise be to Allah. Manure!”)

We had reached an old camping ground of ours on one of our former trips, and the ground was plentifully strewn with the camel droppings, that in the great heat had become thoroughly desiccated, making excellent fuel.

Though it was still early in the day, we unloaded the camels, and Khalil started to make a plentiful supply of dough. With the help of the last handful of dried grass, Musa and his gun produced the necessary blaze, and in half an hour the bread was being baked over a hot fire of _barr_. In the evening we reached the bushes, and the fuel difficulty was solved.

Our water was again at its lowest ebb. We had still a long day’s journey to make before meeting Abd er Rahman again, and had barely enough water for the purpose. We had watered the camels three times since leaving Mut, sixteen days before, but the total amount that we had been able to give them was far below their requirements.

But Abd er Rahman came in during the course of the evening. He was greatly perturbed to see the state to which the beasts that had remained with us had been reduced. We held a consultation with Qway, and concluded that the only possible way to ensure our being able to get them back again to the oasis was to give them all the water we could possibly spare, keeping only just enough for ourselves, and then to get back again as soon as possible, loading most of the baggage on to the camels that Abd er Rahman had brought with him from Mut, who having drunk their fill in the oasis were in fairly strong condition.

Early in the morning, when the contents of the tanks had had time to cool down, we watered the poor brutes and then, having allowed them an hour to settle their drink, packed up and moved off towards the oasis.

Not long after our start some of the baggage became disarranged, and we had to halt to adjust it. Khalil took the opportunity to sit down and declare that he was tired and had “bristers” on his feet, and could go no farther unless he was allowed to ride, adding that he was “not as these Arabs” and had been “delicutly nurchered!”

As it was less than an hour since we had left the camp, it was quite impossible that he could have been tired, and as for his blisters, when examined they proved to consist of a single small “brister” on his instep, which, as we were travelling over smooth sand and he, like all the rest of us, was walking barefoot, could not have caused him the slightest inconvenience.

I pointed this out to him and told him that if he stayed behind and left the caravan he would be certain to die of thirst.

“Never mind,” he replied heroically. “Never mind. I will stay behind and die. I cannot walk any more. I am tired. You go on, sir, and save yourselves. I will stay here and die in the desert.”

We had had many scenes of this kind with Khalil, and the _bedawin_ never failed to enjoy them thoroughly.

“What is he saying?” asked Qway.

I translated as well as I could.

“_Malaysh_” (“it’s of no consequence”), replied Qway calmly. “Let him stay behind and die if he wants to. Whack the camels, Abd er Rahman, and let’s go. We can’t wait. We are in the desert, and short of water.”

“I shall die,” sobbed Khalil.

“_Malaysh_,” repeated Qway, without even troubling to look back at him.

I felt much inclined to tickle the aggravating brute up with my _kurbaj_, but it was against my principles to beat a native, so we went on and left him sitting alone in the desert.

“My wife will be a widow,” screamed Khalil after us—though how he expected that contingency to appeal to our sympathies was not quite clear. Musa shouted back some ribald remarks about the lady in question, and the caravan proceeded cheerfully—not to say uproariously—upon its way.

After we had gone some distance our road dipped down to a lower level, and we lost sight of Khalil for a while. I looked back just before we got out of sight, and saw him sitting exactly where we had left him. We travelled a considerable distance before a rise in the ground over which our road ran enabled us to see him again. On looking back through my glasses, I could just distinguish him sitting still where we had left him. I quite expected that by the time we had gone a few hundred yards—or at any rate as soon as we were out of sight—that Khalil would have got up and followed us. But the _fellahin_ of Egypt are a queer-tempered race, who when they cannot get exactly what they want, will sometimes fall into a fit of suicidal sulks that is rather difficult to deal with. As Khalil appeared to have got into this sulky frame of mind I began to fear that he really intended to carry out his threat and to stay where he was until he either died of thirst, or had been so far left behind by the caravan that he would be unable to rejoin us, which would have led to the same result.

Qway, when I asked him how long it would take for us to reach the oasis, was most positive in saying that it would be all that we could do to get across the dunes before sunset the next day. The sand belt, though easy enough to cross in daylight, when we could see where we were going, would have presented a very serious obstacle in the dark. With the possibility of another day of scorching _simum_ or, worse still, a violent sandstorm in our teeth, before we reached Dakhla, a delay that would cause us to camp the next night on the wrong side of the dunes, and so entail another twelve hours in the desert before reaching water, might have had very serious consequences.

“If we don’t cross the sand to-morrow,” said Qway impressively, “we may not reach Mut at all. Look at the camels. Look at our tanks. They are nearly empty. We must go on. We can’t wait.”

I couldn’t risk sacrificing the whole caravan for the sake of one malingerer; so I told Abd er Rahman to whack up the camels, and we left the “delicutly nurchered” Khalil to die in the desert.

Soon afterwards we lost sight of him altogether. We had started early in the morning and we went on throughout the day, with hardly a halt, till eight o’clock at night, when we were compelled to stop in order to rest the camels. We saw nothing more of Khalil and gave him up for lost. To give him a last chance we lighted a big fire and then composed ourselves to sleep as well as we could, on a wholly insufficient allowance of water.

Towards morning Khalil staggered into the camp amid the jeers and curses of the men, croaked a request for water and, having drunk, flung himself down to sleep, too dead beat even to eat.

That little episode cured Khalil of malingering, and he gave no further trouble on our journey to Mut. It just shows what a little tact will do in dealing with a native. Many brutal fellows would have beaten the poor man!

The next day luckily proved fairly cool, and we made better progress than we expected. We consequently struck the dune belt just after noon and, as we seemed to have found a low part of it, by Qway’s advice I decided to tackle it at that point.

But in coming to this decision I had overlooked a most important factor in the situation—the light. Curious as it may seem, dunes are sometimes almost as difficult to cross in the blazing sunshine at noon as they are in the dark. The intense glare at this time of day makes the almost white sand of which they are composed most painful to look at, and the total absence of any shade prevents their shape being seen and makes even the ripples practically invisible.

In consequence of this state of affairs, Qway, while riding ahead of the caravan to show the way, blundered without seeing where he was going, off the flat top of a dune on to the steep face below, was thrown, and he and his _hagin_ only just escaped rolling down to the bottom, a fall of some thirty feet. After that, until we reached the farther side of the belt, he remained on foot, dragging his _hagin_ behind him. Once across the dunes the rest of the journey was easy enough.

The news of affairs in Europe that we heard in Dakhla on our return was simply heartbreaking. The revolution in Turkey that had promised to be rather a big thing, had fizzled out entirely. The Sultan Abdul Hamid—“Abdul the Damned”—it is true had been deposed; but his brother, Mohammed V, had been made ruler in his stead, and was firmly seated on the rickety Turkish throne. The disturbance had quieted down in Turkey; there was no chance of there being a republic, and so the threatened invasion of Egypt by the Senussi, was not in the least likely to come off.

All the same, we felt fairly pleased with ourselves, for we had been for eighteen days in the desert away from water, with only seven camels, in the most trying time of the year, and had got back again without losing a single beast. But anyone who feels inclined to repeat this picnic is advised to take enough water and suitable food.

The Gubary road by which we travelled to Kharga followed the foot of the cliff that forms the southern boundary of the plateau upon which ’Ain Amur lies. It was very featureless and uninteresting. But though it contained no natural features of any importance, the _bedawin_ have a number of landmarks along it to which they have given names and by which they divide the road up into various stages. It is curious to see how the necessity for naming places arises as soon as a district becomes frequented.

These little landmarks are often shown in maps in a very misleading way. One of those on the Gubary road is known as Bu el Agul. There is another Bu el Agul, or Abu el Agul, as it is sometimes called, on the Derb et Tawil, or “long road,” that runs from the Nile Valley, near Assiut, across the desert to Dakhla Oasis. I have often seen this place marked on maps in an atlas, the name being printed in the same type as that used for big mountains, or villages in the Nile Valley, and there was nothing whatever in the way in which it was shown on these maps to indicate its unimportance.

Now Bu el Agul is only a grave—what is more, it is not even a real grave, it is a bogus one. The commonest form of a native nickname is to christen a man the father of the thing for which he is best known among them. I was myself at one time known as “Abu Zerzura,” the “Father of Zerzura,” because I was supposed to be looking for that oasis, and later on as “Abu Ramal,” “the father of sand,” because I spent so much time among the dunes.

Bu el Agul means the “father of hobbles.” One of the greatest risks that an inexperienced Arab runs, when travelling alone in the desert, is that of allowing his camel to break loose and escape during the night. Then, unless he be near a well, having no beast to carry his water-skin, his fate is probably sealed. Many lives have been lost in this way.

With tragedies of this description constantly before their minds, the desert guides, as a reminder to their less experienced brethren to secure their beasts properly at night, have made an imitation grave about half-way along each of the desert roads. This grave is supposed to represent the last resting-place of the “father of hobbles,” who has lost his life owing to his not having tied up his camel securely at night. It is the custom of every traveller, who uses the road, to throw on to the “grave” as he passes it, a worn-out hobble or water-skin, or part of a broken water vessel, with the result that in time a considerable pile accumulates.

It was the end of June by the time we reached Kharga again. Anyone attempting to work in the desert at any distance away from water after March is severely handicapped by the high temperature. I had already experienced nearly three months of these conditions, and the prospect of doing any good in the desert during the remainder of the hot weather was so remote that I returned to England for the remainder of the summer.