ON A WATERLESS WAY 135 



south, yet our guide turned deliberately west of it. 

 My camel was ill after his unaccustomed date-feeding. 

 Hassanein was in great pain from his blistered feet. A 

 permanent north wind, warring for a week with a burn- 

 ing sun, had implanted rheumatism in my right shoulder. 

 The firewood had given out, and there had been a sharp 

 quarrel between the blacks and the Beduins on this 

 account, each accusing the other of using more than their 

 share. 



Abdullah kept on his south-westerly course for a few 

 hours, and then began to wander slightly. The blacks 

 wanted to beat him. Even Mohammed was impatient 

 with him. We steered almost due south. Hassanein 

 had to ride all day and Mohammed's eyes were bloodshot 

 with the pain of his feet, yet he struggled on. That night 

 there were no fires in the camp, and I fully expected 

 Abdullah would be murdered. However, when I woke 

 before the dawn on January 2, I heard him laughing, 

 so hoped he had recovered his head. We dared not start 

 till "the country had turned upside down" and revealed 

 to us what lay in front, so we occupied ourselves in find- 

 ing our exact position. According to our map we were 

 now within the borders of Taiserbo! This raised the 

 problem of whether it were one consecutive oasis or 

 whether it were possible to go between two groups of 

 palms without seeing either! 



At 8 A.M. the mirage showed us one sharp dune very 

 much to the west. I wanted to go straight there, hoping 

 by sunset to be able to climb it and have a good view of 

 what lay beyond, but both Abdullah and Moraja insisted 

 that no such dune lay anywhere near Taiserbo. "If we 

 go as much west as that we go straight to Hell," said 

 the guide decisively. With the ever-present danger of 

 going beyond Taiserbo into the uninhabited western 

 desert it was impossible to argue. With only one day's 



