Chapter XVIII: ABD ER RAHMAN was an excellent tracker

There had been no wind to speak of since Qway had left the depot, and the footprints on the sandy soil were as sharp and distinct as when they were first made. By following Qway’s tracks we were able to piece together the history of his journey with no uncertainty; and a very interesting job it proved.

We followed his footprints for three days, and there was mighty little that he did in that time that was not revealed by his tracks—Abd er Rahman even pointed out one place where Qway had spat on the ground while riding on his camel!

We could see where he had walked and led his mount, and where he had mounted again and ridden. We could see where he walked her and where he trotted; where he had curled himself up on the ground beside her and slept at night, and all along his track, at intervals, were the places where he had stopped to pray—the prints of his open hands where he bowed to the ground, and even the mark where he had pressed his forehead on the sand in prostration, were clearly visibly. The Moslem prayers are said at stated hours, and Qway was always extremely regular in his devotions. This prayerful habit of his was of the greatest assistance to us, as it told us the time at which he had passed each point.

Walking on foot he had led his camel behind him, when he left the depot, till he reached Abdulla’s trail. He had then mounted and gone forward at a slow shuffling trot. Abdulla also had left the depot on foot, leading his _hagin_, and the tracks of Qway’s camel occasionally crossed his spoor and overlaid them, showing that Abdulla and his _hagin_ were in front.

Abdulla had continued at a walk until Qway overtook him—as shown by his tracks overlying those of Qway. Knowing the pace at which Qway must have trotted and at which Abdulla would have walked, by noting the time it took us to walk from the depot to where Qway caught Abdulla up, we were able to estimate that Qway could not have left the depot until Abdulla was nearly a mile and a half away, and consequently too far off to see what he was doing.

After Qway joined on to Abdulla, the two men had ridden on together till they reached Jebel el Bayed. Here, however, they had halted and evidently consulted together for some time before separating, as the ground all over a small area at this point was closely trampled. On separating, Abdulla had gone off at a trot, as arranged, towards the south, while Qway had sauntered leisurely along towards the second hill, two days’ away to the south-west, or Jebel Abdulla as the men had named it.

We concluded from Qway’s tracks, as dated by his praying places, that he must be rather more than a long day’s journey ahead of us.

We continued following his trail until the sun began to set, when, as we did not want to overlook any tracks in the dark, we halted for the night. We had got by that time into rather broken ground, cut up into ridges and hills about twenty feet high, at the foot of one of which we camped.

In spite of Abd er Rahman’s scandalised protests, I insisted on doing my share of the work in the caravan. I helped him to unload the camels, then, while he was feeding the beasts, I lit the fire and made the tea.

Abd er Rahman returned and made bread, and I opened a small tin of jam, which we shared together. Abd er Rahman then made some coffee, and very well he did it; and after eating some dates I produced a cigarette-case and we sat and smoked over the fire. The result of this informal treatment on my part being that Abd er Rahman became more communicative.

His views were those of a typical _bedawi_. He disapproved highly of the way in which Qway had behaved. If we had been a caravan of _fellahin_, he said, it would not have been so bad, but for a guide to behave in that way to us who knew the _nijem_ was, he considered, the last word in treachery. To “know the _nijem_” (stars) by which the Arabs steer at night means to have a knowledge of desert craft, an accomplishment that forms perhaps the strongest possible recommendation to the true _bedawin_.

He told me that when the _mamur_ had had them all round to the _merkaz_, and it came to be Qway’s turn to be questioned—the very man of whom I had complained—directly he heard his name, he told him he need give him no further details, as he knew all about him, and that he was to be trusted to do his duty; but he apparently omitted to specify what that duty was—the _mamur_ was a nationalist.

When I asked if he felt afraid to go on with me after Qway, he laughed, saying that he was quite as clever as he was in the desert, having lived there nearly the whole of his life and had often travelled long distances alone. So long as he had enough water he did not care how far he went, provided I did not want to take him to the Bedayat. He even volunteered to go with me to within sight of their country, in order that I might be able to fix its position, provided he did not see any tracks of theirs before getting there. He was highly elated at having found Qway out, and very full of confidence in his own abilities.

He then began to tell me some of his experiences. Once he had been out in the desert with a single camel, when it had broken down a long way from water. He had tied the camel up, slung a _gurba_ on his back, and, leaving his beast behind him, walked into the Nile Valley. He arrived with his _gurba_ empty and half dead from thirst, but managed to crawl up to a watercourse, where he drank such an enormous amount that he immediately vomited it all up again. He managed to borrow another camel, with which he had taken water out to the one he had abandoned in the desert. The latter was almost dead on his arrival; but after drinking and resting for a day, had been able to get back to safety.

When Arabs are running short of water, but their camels are still able to travel, he said, they throw all their baggage down in the desert, where no one but the worst of _haramin_ (robbers) would touch it, put all their water on to the camels and travel all through the night and cool part of the day, resting in the shade, if there be any, during the hot hours, and resuming their march as soon as it gets cool again in the evening. In this way, occasionally riding their beasts to rest, they can cover forty miles a day quite easily for several consecutive days.

I asked whether he had ever heard of a man, when in difficulties, cutting open his camel to drink the water from his stomach, according to the little tales of my childhood’s days. This caused Abd er Rahman considerable amusement. He pointed out that if a caravan were in great straits from thirst, there would not be any water in the stomachs of the camels. But he said he had heard of several cases where a man, reduced to the last extremity, had killed his camel, cut him open and got at the half-digested food in his interior and had wrung the gastric juices out of it and drank them. This fluid, he said, was so indescribably nasty, as to be hardly drinkable, but, though it made a man feel still more thirsty, it enabled him to last about another day without water.

While sitting over the fire with Abd er Rahman I heard a faint sound from the west that sounded like a stone being kicked in the distance. Abd er Rahman, who was, I believe, slightly deaf, was unable to hear anything. I put my ear to the ground and listened for some time, and at last heard the sound again, but apparently from a greater distance than before.

Leaving Abd er Rahman in charge of the camels and taking my rifle, I went off to see if anything was to be seen. The moon was too faint and low at the time for any tracks to be visible. The whole desert was bathed in a faint and ghostly light that made it impossible to see any distance; so after watching for some time, and hearing no further sounds, I returned and lay down for the night about a hundred yards from Abd er Rahman and his camels.

It is curious how easily, in the absolute calm of a desert night, the slightest sound is audible, and how quickly one wakes at the faintest unusual noise. About midnight I started up. The distant sound of a trotting camel approaching the camp was clearly audible, and the camel was being ridden very fast. By that time the moon was high in the heavens, making the surrounding desert visible for a considerable distance, and presently I saw a solitary rider come round the shoulder of the ridge near which we were camped, sending his camel along at a furious pace.

Instantly I heard Abd er Rahman’s sharp, threatening challenge and saw him slinging his carbine forward in readiness for an attack. The answer came back in a hoarse exhausted voice and was apparently satisfactory, for the camel man rode into the camp, his camel fell down on his knees, and the man got—or rather fell—off on to the ground.

I sang out to Abd er Rahman to ask who it was. He called back that it was Abdulla and, after bending for a few moments over his prostrate form, came running across to where I lay. Abdulla and his _hagin_ were, he said, extremely exhausted; but he had told him that there was no danger and that we could do nothing before daylight and had begun a long statement about Qway having turned back, in the middle of which he had fallen asleep. I went over to the camp to look at him. His long attenuated form was stretched out along the ground, almost where he had dismounted, plunged in the deepest of slumbers; so, as I saw no object in disturbing him, and wanted him to be as fresh as possible on the morrow, I went back to my bed and followed his example, leaving Abd er Rahman to keep watch, till he woke me to take my turn at keeping guard later in the night.

Abdulla, on the following morning, looked hollow-eyed, and, if possible, thinner about the face than ever; but beyond having obviously had a severe fright, he seemed to be little worse for his ride; the Sudanese have wonderful recuperative powers. His _hagin_, however, was terribly tucked up, and he had evidently had to ride him extremely hard; but he was a fine beast, and otherwise did not seem to have suffered much from his exertions, for he was making a most hearty breakfast.

Abdulla’s nerves, however, seemed to have been very badly shaken. He spoke in a wild incoherent way, very different from his usual slow, rather drawling, speech. He rambled so much in his account of what had happened, and introduced so many abusive epithets directed at Qway, that at times it was rather difficult to follow him, and Abd er Rahman had to help me out occasionally by explaining his meaning.

Qway, in the depot, had dawdled so over his preparations for leaving the camp that Abdulla, with his eye probably on the _bakhshish_ I had promised him, had become impatient at the delay. At the last moment, just before he was ready to start, Qway calmly sat down, lighted a fire and began to make tea. Abdulla expostulated at this delay, but Qway assured him that there was no immediate hurry, told him that as soon as he had finished his tea and filled his _gurba_, he would start, and suggested that he had better go on before him and that he would follow and catch him up.

After he had gone some distance, Abdulla looked back and saw Qway hauling the tanks about, which struck him at the time as a rather unnecessary performance; but as Qway explained, when he overtook him, that he had only been rearranging the depot and placing the sacks of barley so as more effectually to shade the tanks, his suspicions had been lulled. Just before they separated, Qway had told him that he intended to get out as far as he could, so as to earn a very big _bakhshish_, and he hoped to go three and a half days more before he turned back. He advised Abdulla to do the same.

For most of the first day after leaving Qway, Abdulla kept turning things very slowly over in his “feeble head,” and, towards the end of the second day, it began to occur to him that Qway’s long delay in the depot was rather suspicious; so before proceeding any farther along his route, he thought it advisable to ride across and have a look at the old track he had made himself on his previous journey, to make sure that Qway was keeping to his share of the arrangement, by following it towards Jebel Abdulla.

On reaching his track he saw no sign of Qway having passed that way, so becoming seriously uneasy, he rode back along it hoping to meet him. At a distance of only about a day from Jebel el Bayed he found the place where Qway had turned back, which as he had told him he intended to go for another two and a half days farther, convinced him that something was very seriously wrong. He then apparently became panic-stricken and came tearing back along his tracks to make sure that we were coming out to meet him and that the depot had not been interfered with.

Qway, he said, had returned along his tracks for some distance, until he had got within sight of Jebel el Bayed, when he had turned off towards the western side of the hill, apparently with the object of avoiding the caravan, which according to the arrangement, he knew would be following Abdulla’s track on its eastern side.

It struck me that as Qway’s track lay to the west of our camp, the sounds I had heard during the preceding evening from that direction had probably been caused by him as he rode past us in the dark, so I sent Abd er Rahman off to see if he could find anything, while Abdulla and I packed up and loaded the camels.

Abd er Rahman returned in great glee to announce that I had been right in my conjecture, and that he had found Qway’s track; so we started out to follow it. To the west of the camp was a ridge of ground that lay between our position and Qway’s footprints, and this may perhaps have prevented my seeing him, and certainly would have made it impossible for him to see either us or our fire.

Qway had passed us at a considerable distance, for it took us twenty-one minutes to reach his trail, which shows the extraordinary way in which even the slightest sounds carry in the desert on a still night.

As we followed his track we discussed the position. It was clear that, as Qway, when he left the depot, only had five days’ water in the two small tanks I had given him, he would be forced before long to renew his supply from our tanks, as he had already been three days away from the depot.

Abd er Rahman, instead of making our depot at Jebel el Bayed, as I had told him to do, on account of it being such a conspicuous landmark, had, fortunately as it turned out, made it about half a day to the north of the hill, in the middle of a very flat desert with no landmark of any kind in the neighbourhood. When the tanks and grain sacks composing the depot were all piled up they made a heap only about three feet high and, as the sacks, which had been laid on the top of the tanks to keep off the sun, were almost the colour of their sandy surroundings, our little store of water and grain was quite invisible, except at a very short distance to anyone not blessed with perfect sight, and Qway was rather deficient in this respect. He would consequently experience very great difficulty in finding that depot, unless he struck our tracks.

As we continued to follow his footprints, it became clear that this was what he was aiming at, for his route, that at first had been running nearly due north, gradually circled round Jebel el Bayed till it ran almost towards the east, evidently with the intention of cutting the tracks that we had made the day before. His trail went steadily on, circling round the great black hill behind us without a single halt to break the monotony of the journey.

We had been following his spoor for about three hours and a half when we reached the point where his trail met and crossed the one that we had made ourselves and, as Qway had not hesitated for a moment, it was clear that in the uncertain moonlight he had passed it unnoticed.

As we continued to follow his tracks, presently it became evident that he had been considerably perplexed. Several times he had halted to look round him from the top of some slight rise in the ground, and had then ridden on again in the same easterly direction and repeated the process.

Abd er Rahman, on seeing these tracks, was beside himself with delight. He slapped his thigh and burst out laughing, exclaiming that Qway was lost, and “Praise be to Allah” had only got five days’ water supply. Abdulla, if anything, seemed even more pleased.

After a time Qway apparently concluded that he would wait till daylight before proceeding any farther, for we found the place where he had lain down to sleep. That he had started off again before dawn was clear from the fact that he had not prayed where he slept, but nearly an hour’s journey farther on.

We followed him for a little farther, but as the afternoon was then far spent, I thought it best to return to the depot for the night, in case Qway should get there before us.

Frequently when out in the desert I had occasion to send Qway, or one of the men away from the caravan, to climb a hill to see if anything was to be seen from the summit, to scout ahead of the caravan, or for some other purpose, and as there was always a risk that the absentee might not get back to the caravan by dark I had a standing arrangement that if anyone got lost from this cause I would send up a rocket half an hour after sunset, and a second one a quarter of an hour later, to enable him to find the camp. These two rockets were accordingly fired from the depot and, moreover, as it was an absolutely windless night, a candle was lighted and left burning on the top of a pile of stones to attract his attention in the dark, if he were anywhere in the neighbourhood. I hoped by this means to induce him to come in and give himself up, in preference to risking a possible death by thirst—but he never materialised.

In the morning we set out again to follow his track. I could not exactly leave him to die of thirst, if he had really got lost, and I also wanted to know what he was doing. As the camels were getting into a very poor condition, owing to the hard work they had had and the short water allowance I had put them on, we left all the baggage in the depot, and took them along with us, carrying only sufficient water for our own use during the day.

We picked up Qway’s trail where we had left it and, after following it for some distance, found where he had reached the old faint footprints left by Abdulla on his first journey, when he had ridden out alone to Jebel Abdulla. They had clearly puzzled him extremely. He dismounted and stood for some time examining the track and scanning the surrounding desert, as was clear from the number of footprints he had left at the place and the number of directions in which they pointed.

After a considerable amount of hesitation, he again set off in the same easterly direction he had been previously following, probably still hoping to find the tracks of the caravan that he had crossed in the moonlight without seeing.

I wanted Abdulla to get on his _hagin_ and follow his tracks at a trot, hoping that in that level country, as Qway was only travelling at a walk, he would be able to overtake him sufficiently to sight him from a distance. But he had not recovered his nerve from the fright he had experienced and flatly refused to leave us, so we continued to follow the tracks together.

After riding for some distance farther, Qway had again climbed to the crest of a low ridge. Here he had stood for some time, his footprints pointing in all directions, endeavouring to pick up the bearings of the depot and the route that he had followed when he had left it.

But that bit of desert might have been especially made for the purpose of confusing an erring guide. As far as could be seen in all directions stretched a practically level expanse of sandy soil, showing no landmark to guide him, except where the great black bulk of Jebel el Bayed heaved itself up from the monotonous surface. We could tell from his tracks that he had reached that point not much before midday, when, at that time of the year, the sun was almost directly overhead, and consequently of little use to indicate the points of the compass. From where he had stood, Jebel el Bayed itself would have been of little use to guide him, for though the hill had two summits lying roughly east and west of each other, the western one was from that point hidden by the eastern, which was of such a rounded form that it looked almost exactly the same shape from all angles on its eastern side.

Qway at last had evidently given up the problem. He had remounted his camel, ridden round a circle a hundred yards or so in diameter in a final attempt to pick up his bearings, and then had made off at a sharp trot towards the north. Abd er Rahman was in ecstasies.

“Qway’s lost. Qway’s lost.” He turned grinning delightedly to me. “I told you I was a better guide than Qway.” Then he suddenly grew solemn. Much as he hated the overbearing Arab, he had worked with him for two seasons, and, as he had said, there is a bond of union between those who “know the _nijem_.” “He will die. It is certain he will die. He only had five days’ water, and it is four days since he left the depot. He is not going where the water is, but he is making for the ‘Valley of the Rat.’ It is certain he will die of thirst. His camel has had no water for four days.”

Abdulla took a more hard-hearted view, and after the way in which Qway had treated him, he could hardly be blamed. “Let the cursed Arab die,” said the Sudani. “The son of a dog is only a traitor.”

We followed Qway’s footprints for a short distance. But he had been travelling very fast, and it was obvious that we should never catch him up. He was off on a non-stop run to Mut, and as our own water supply was by no means too plentiful, I thought we had better follow his example; so I told Abdulla to take us back to the depot. It was then about noon.

Abdulla looked at Jebel el Bayed, glanced at the sun and looked round the horizon, scratched his cheek in perplexity, and said he did not know where the depot was, but he thought it must be _there_—he pointed somewhere towards the north-west. Abd er Rahman, however, was emphatic in saying that that was not the right direction, and indicated a point about west as being its position.

After some discussion, as they were unable to agree, Abd er Rahman turned to me and asked me to look at my compass to decide the direction in which we were to go. Unfortunately, I had left the compass in camp and had not been making a traverse of Qway’s tracks, as I had done on the previous day. We had all been too keen on reading Qway’s spoor to pay much attention to the changes in its direction, and so found ourselves in the same dilemma as Qway.

It was a furiously hot still day, and the sun shining almost perpendicularly down made the whole horizon dance with mirage, producing the impression that we were standing on a low sand bank in a vast sheet of water, whose distant shores flickered continuously in the heat haze—a veritable “devil’s sea” as the natives call it.

I had only the vaguest idea as to where the depot lay, but as I had to decide in which direction to go, I told them I felt quite certain that it stood west north-west—about half-way between the two bearings pointed out by the men. It was a mere guess, based on the assumption that they were neither of them very far wrong, but that their errors lay on either side of the true direction. As luck would have it, I was much nearer right than either of the others, a fact that greatly increased their respect for my knowledge of the _nijem_!

After marching for a couple of hours or so, Abd er Rahman peered for a moment into the distance and announced that he saw the depot ahead of us. Neither Abdulla nor I could see anything. After some difficulty, however, I managed to identify the object to which Abd er Rahman was pointing, but all I could make out was an indistinct and shapeless blur, dancing and continually changing its shape in the mirage. Abd er Rahman, however, was most positive that it was the goal for which we were making, and, as I knew his extraordinary powers for identifying objects in similar circumstances, we made towards it and found that he had been correct.

We rested in the depot until sunset. Just before starting, it struck us that possibly we might pass Ibrahim and Dahab on the road. The arrangement I had made with them was that, if they failed to see us before reaching the depot, they were to leave as much water there as they could and return at once to Mut. But I wanted to arrange some means by which they should know where we had gone in the event of their reaching the depot. A letter was the obvious method, but Dahab was the only man in the caravan who could read or write, and I was doubtful whether he would come out again, as I had told him not to do so if he got at all knocked up on the journey back to Mut. Ibrahim, of course, was wholly illiterate, like the other two Sudanese, so it was difficult to see how I could communicate with him, if he came out alone. Abd er Rahman, however, was quite equal to the emergency. He told me that he would write Ibrahim a “letter” that he would understand, and, taking a stick scratched his _wasm_ (tribe mark) deeply into the soil, and then drew a line from it in the direction of Dakhla, the “letter” when finished being as follows: [Symbol], the mark [Symbol] being his _wasm_. This letter, Abd er Rahman said, meant, “I, belonging to the tribe who use this _wasm_, have gone in the direction of the line I have drawn from it.” This important communication having been completed, we set out on our return journey.