CHRISTMAS IN THE DESERT 115 



made their appearance and had to be dumped into the 

 first available sack. 



It is no easy matter loading a caravan that has got 

 to travel two hundred and fifty miles with a seven days' 

 waterless stretch. I looked at our eighteen camels with 

 much anxiety. Some of them were small and weak. 

 One of them was a living picture of all that a camel 

 should not be. He might have been used successfully 

 by the Khartoum Camel Corps as an example to enthu- 

 siastic young ofiicers of what not to buy. His feet were 

 worn, his hump was soft, his elbows rubbed together as 

 he walked, his chest pad was insufficient, and he had 

 sores under his shoulders. Besides this, many of the 

 nagas were in foal. However, it was no use worrjnng 

 in advance. Long ago I had realised that we should get 

 to Kufara only if Allah so willed, and the farther we 

 moved into the desert the more I felt impelled by some 

 ulterior force. I was never surprised when difficulties 

 piled themselves up and then vanished without reason at 

 the last moment. I began to feel a fatalistic trust in 

 the destiny that had dragged me from hunting and hunt 

 balls and sent me out into the white Sahara to find the 

 Holy place which had been a secret for so long. The 

 feeling of Kismet was so strong that it prevented my 

 troubling excessively over our weak camels, even though 

 I felt that they were dangerously overloaded. Our party 

 had increased to nineteen by two black slave girls in 

 vivid barracans and little else, property of one of the 

 Sayeds, who wished them sent to Kufara. 



In spite of the utmost exertions the caravan was not 

 ready to start till 11.30, when, amidst a chorus of kindly 

 wishes, regrets and blessings, we plodded slowly out of 

 the hospitable town into a raging north-westerly wind. 

 We meant to march on into the night and reach Buttafal 

 about 10 P.M., but fate decided otherwise, for almost 



