Chapter XVI

THE caravan, with Abd er Rahman and Ibrahim, returned, dead beat, but safe. No less than four of the tanks they had taken out filled with water had leaked and had had to be brought back. They had had to race home by day and night marches all the way. But they had got in all right—we had extraordinary luck in this way.

As Abdulla did not come in till two days later, I began to fear that something had happened to him. He arrived with his camel in an awful state. The sores on his back, which appeared to have healed when he started, had broken out again and were very much worse than when he first reached Mut.

His camel had gone so badly, he said, that he had not been able to do half as much as he would have done if his mount had been in good condition, and he was very vexed about it indeed. He had followed Abd er Rahman’s directions and had found Jebel el Bayed without difficulty. He had climbed to the top and seen the second hill beyond. He had then gone on towards it—his camel going very badly indeed—for a day and a half over easy desert, after which he had crossed a belt of dunes that took about an hour to negotiate. Then after another half-day he managed to reach the second hill and had climbed to the top of it. To the south and south-west lay open desert with no dunes, falling towards the west, dotted with hills and stretching away as far as he could see. To the north he had been able to see the cliff on the south of the plateau—the pass down which we had descended into the “Valley of the Mist” being distinctly visible, though it must have been a good hundred and twenty miles away. After this he said he could do no more with such a wretched camel, so he had been obliged to return. He was very apologetic indeed for having done so little.

It never seemed to occur to this simple Sudani that he had made a most remarkable journey. Acting only on directions given him by Abd er Rahman, he had gone off entirely alone, into an absolutely waterless and barren desert, with which he was totally unacquainted, with a very sore-backed camel and riding only on a baggage saddle—his riding saddle had got broken before the start—but he had covered in thirteen days a distance, as the crow flies, of nearly four hundred miles, and more remarkable still had apologised for not having been able to do more! He got some _bakhshish_ that surprised him—and greatly disgusted Qway who got none.

The fact that Abdulla saw the pass into the “Valley of the Mist” from the top of the hill he reached—Jebel Abdulla as the men called it—shows that the hill was of considerable height, for it, Jebel el Bayed and the pass, lay in practically a straight line, and the desert there was very level. The summit of the pass was about 1700 feet high—the cliff itself being about 250 feet. But it could not be seen from the top of Jebel el Bayed, which was 2150 feet, owing to a low intervening rise in the ground. A simple diagram will show that, as it was visible over this ridge from the top of Jebel Abdulla, the latter must have been at least 2700 feet high.

Qway, of course, though excellently mounted, had done practically nothing. There could be little doubt that he and the Senussi were hand in glove. He was always asking leave to go to places like Hindaw, Smint and Qalamun, where I knew the Senussi had _zawias_, and the Sheykh el Afrit at Smint and Sheykh Senussi, the poet in Mut, were his two intimate friends, and both of them members of the Senussia.

The Senussi had always been a nuisance to travellers wanting to go into their country. It was, however, difficult to see what they could do. They would not, I thought, dare to do anything openly in the oasis and, by getting rid of two out of their three camels I had rather tied them up for the time being, so far as the desert was concerned. So I went on with my preparations for our final journey with a fairly easy mind, making the fatal mistake of underestimating my opponents.

First I engaged the local tinsmith to patch up six tanks that had developed leaks. Then I sent Ibrahim round the town to see if he could not find some more weapons. He returned with a neat little battle axe, a spear and a six-foot gas-pipe gun with a flint-lock. All of which I bought as curiosities.

We then went out and tried the gun. It shot, it is true, a few feet to one side; but little trifles like that are nothing to a _bedawi_. The general opinion of the men was that it was a very good gun indeed. Abdulla said he had been in the camel corps and understood guns, and undertook to put it right. He shut one eye and looked along the barrel, then he rested the muzzle on the ground and stamped about half-way down the barrel to bend it. He repeated this process several times, then handed the gun back to Ibrahim, saying that he thought he had got it straight.

I got up a shooting match between the three Sudanese to test it. The target was a tin of bad meat at eighty yards, and Ibrahim with the flint-lock gun, with his second shot, hit the tin and won the ten piastres that I offered as a prize, beating Abd er Rahman and Abdulla armed with Martini’s.

Then I set to work to buy some more barley for our journey and difficulties at once arose. I sent Abd er Rahman and Abdulla with some camels to Belat, but the _’omda_ told them he had sold the whole of his grain; though they learnt in the oasis that he had not been able to sell any and still had huge stores of it left.

Abd er Rahman began dropping ponderous hints about Qway, the Senussi, “arrangements” and “intrigue”; but, as usual, declined to be more definite. Qway, when I told him of the difficulty of procuring grain, was sympathetic, but piously resigned. It was the will of Allah. Certainly the _’omda_ of Belat had none left—he knew this as a fact. It would be quite impossible, he said, to carry out my fifteen days’ journey with such a small quantity of grain and he thought the only thing for me to do was to abandon the idea of it altogether.

I told him I had no intention of giving the journey up in any circumstances. The only other plan he could think of was to buy the grain from the Senussi at Qasr Dakhl. They had plenty—excellent barley. I mentioned this to Dahab, who was extremely scornful, declaring that they would not sell me any, or if they did, that it would be poisoned, for he said it was well known that the Mawhubs thoroughly understood medicine.

The new _mamur_ arrived in due course. The previous one, ’Omar Wahaby, had endeavoured to _ayb_ me by not calling till I threatened him. The new one went one better—he sent for me—and had to be badly snubbed in consequence.

The natives of Egypt attach great importance to this kind of thing, and I was glad to see that my treatment of the _mamur_ caused a great improvement in the attitude of the inhabitants of Mut towards me, which had been anything but friendly before.

The _mamur_ himself must have been considerably impressed. He called and enquired about my men, and asked if I had any complaints to make against them. I told him Qway was working very badly and had got very lazy; so he said he thought, before I started, that he had better speak to them privately. I knew I should hear from my men what happened, so thinking it might have a good effect upon Qway, I sent them round in the afternoon to the _merkaz_.

They returned looking very serious—Abd er Rahman in particular seemed almost awed. I asked him what the _mamur_ had said. He told me he had taken down all their names and addresses, and then had told them they must work their best for me, because, though he did not quite know exactly who I was, I was clearly a very important person indeed—all of which shows how very easily a _fellah_ is impressed by a little side!—_il faut se faire valoir_ in dealing with a native.

The _mamur_ afterwards gave me his opinion of my men. His views on Dahab were worth repeating. He told me he had questioned him and come to the conclusion that he was honest, _very_ honest—“In fact,” he said, “he is almost stupid!”

The barley boycott began to assume rather alarming proportions. The men could hear of no grain anywhere in the oasis, except at Belat, Tenida and the Mawhubs, and it really looked as though I should have to abandon my journey.

I could, of course, have tried to get some grain from Kharga, but it would have taken over a week to fetch. It was doubtful, too, whether I could have got as much as I wanted without going to the Nile Valley for it, and that would have wasted a fortnight at least. I was at my wits’ end to know what to do.

The _Deus ex machina_ arrived in the form of the police officer—a rather unusual shape for it to take in the oases. He came round one afternoon to call. I was getting very bored with his conversation, when he aroused my interest by saying he was sending some men to get barley for the Government from the Senussi at Qasr Dakhl. From the way in which he was always talking about money and abusing the “avaricious” _’omdas_, I felt pretty sure that he lost no chance of turning an honest piastre; so finding that the price he was going to pay was only seventy piastres the _ardeb_, I told him that I was paying hundred and twenty, and that, if he bought an extra four _ardebs_, I would take them off him at that price—and I omitted to make any suggestion as to what should be done with the balance of the purchase money.

As trading in Government stores is a criminal offence, I felt fairly sure that he would not tell the Senussi for what purpose that extra four _ardebs_ was being bought.

The result of this transaction was that, in spite of the barley boycott that the Senussi had engineered against me, I was eventually able to start off again to explore the desert, whose secrets they were so jealously guarding, with my camels literally staggering under the weight of some really magnificent grain, bought, if they had only known it, from the Senussi themselves!

The plan for the journey was as follows: we were to leave Dakhla with every camel in the caravan, including the _hagins_, loaded to their maximum carrying capacity with water-tanks and grain. At the end of every day’s march a small depot was to be left, consisting of a pair of the small tanks I had had made for the journey, and sufficient barley for the camels and food for the men for a day’s supply. The reduction in the weight of the baggage entailed by the making of these depots, added to that of the water and grain consumed by the caravan on the journey, I calculated would leave two camels free by the time that we reached the five bushes.

Qway and Abdulla, who were to accompany the caravan up to this point, were then to go on ahead of the caravan with their _hagins_ loaded with only enough water and grain to take them out to the main depot at Jebel el Bayed. Here they were to renew their supplies, go on for another day together and then separate. Qway was to follow Abdulla’s tracks out to the second hill—Jebel Abdulla as the men called it—that the Sudani had reached alone on his scouting journey, and was to go on as much farther as he felt was safe in the same direction, after which he was to retrace his steps until he met the caravan coming out along the same route, bringing out water and supplies for his relief. Abdulla’s instructions were to go due south when he parted from Qway for two or, if possible, three days. Then he was to strike off west till he cut Qway’s track, which we should be following, and return upon it till he met the caravan, which would then go on along the line of the old road we had found to complete our fifteen days’ journey, and, if possible, push on till we had got right across the desert into the French Sudan.

I was not expecting great results from Qway’s journey, but he knew too much about our plans and was too useful a man in the desert to make it advisable to leave him behind us in Dakhla, where the Senussi might have made great use of him. Abdulla was well armed, an experienced desert fighter, and, in spite of his “feathery” appearance, was a man with whom it would not be safe to trifle. As there was a considerable amount of friction between him and Qway, owing to the Arab’s overbearing attitude towards the Sudanese in general, I had little fear of their combining.

Abdulla, too, had special instructions to keep an eye on Qway, and, as there was not much love lost between them, I felt sure he would do so. While Abdulla was with him on the journey out to the depot, and for a day beyond, Qway, I felt, would be powerless; while if, after parting from him, he turned back to Jebel el Bayed to try and get at the depot, he would have us on top of him, as we should get there before him. When once the caravan had reached the depot we should pick up all the water and grain it contained and take it along with us following his tracks.

I had made him dependent on the caravan, by only giving him about five days’ water for his own use, and none at all for his camel. So long as he adhered to his programme he was quite safe, as we could water his camel as soon as he rejoined us. But if he tried to follow some plan of his own, he would at once run short of water and find himself in trouble.

I felt that the precautions I had taken would effectually prevent any attempt at foul play on his part. My whole scheme had been thought out very carefully, and had provided, I thought, for every possible contingency, but “the best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley”—especially when dealing with a Senussi guide.