PREFACE 



I FEEL this Libyan story needs a few words of explana- 

 tion, for owing to the peculiar circumstances in which it 

 was undertaken it is not the usual consecutive and com- 

 prehensive book of travel compiled after the return of 

 an expedition wherein the traveller is able to review the 

 journey as a whole. Reading such works, I have so often 

 found myself asking, "And then what happened?" or 

 "I wonder what he felt at the moment?" Well, this 

 is a very simple account of "what happened next." In 

 no way does it pretend to be a scientific record of 

 exploration, for, owing to the ever urgent necessity of 

 secrecy and disguise, the use of most instruments was 

 an impossibility. 



The spirit of the story changes with the mood and 

 the method of its development. It was written in so 

 many odd ways at so many odd times — under a scented 

 sage-bush in the sunset while the slaves were putting up 

 our tent, or huddled inside a flea-bag when the nights 

 were very cold. Sometimes, when life was exciting, it 

 was scribbled on a camel under the shelter of a barracan 1 

 Twice, at least, the last chapter according to all human 

 calculations was completed in the hope that the tattered 

 copy books would somehow find their way back to 

 civihzation and the fate of the expedition be known up 

 till its last moments. It is a daily record of success and 

 failure, of a few months in an alien world, showing how 

 much of that world's spirit was absorbed. Because, in 

 real life, the big things and the little things are inex- 

 tricably mixed up together, so in Libya at one moment 



