ON A WATERLESS WAY 139 



scarcity of food. For an exhausting hour everyone 

 struggled along at their best pace, limping, wavering, 

 with parched mouths and bloodshot eyes, before which 

 danced the tantalising sheets of water and cool, dark 

 mirage hills. Suddenly Yusuf, who was on ahead, flung 

 himself on his face and embraced the earth, afterwards 

 executing a wild, bareheaded dance, during which he 

 waved his long kufiya on the end of his stick. We 

 rushed to join him and found him lovingly stroking a 

 little mound covered with dry, brittle sticks. "It is 

 brushwood-hattab," he said simply. "Inshallah! There 

 is more beyond." Two other mounds appeared shortly 

 with a little coarse, green shrub, over which the camels 

 fought and struggled till the last scrap had disappeared. 

 By this time sunset was near and we had to force our 

 unsteady, aching limbs into a run to reach those elusive 

 dunes in time to catch the clear, far view devoid of 

 mirage that alwaj^s comes at sunset. It was a pathetic 

 race of the halt and the lame in which Hassanein and I 

 w^ere out-distanced. We saw the others clamber up the 

 dune — we saw them stand gazing eastwards — and then 

 we saw them sink motionless in silent groups. I think 

 at that moment I felt our death warrant was sealed. I 

 turned hopelessely to my plucky companion. "It is no 

 good. They would have danced if it had been the 

 'hatia.' " "Yes, they would have made a noise," he 

 said dully. 



We crawled up to the top of the ridge, a series of 

 wavj^ curling dunes running north-west to south-east, 

 expecting to see the same level, monotonous country that 

 lay behind us. Instead, we were amazed to look down 

 over a few lower dunes to an entirely changed tract. On 

 every side were uneven mounds and hillocks covered with 

 decayed scrub, leafless and brown, but a few hundred 

 yards in front was a cluster of huge green bushes. 



