CHAPTER IX 



TREACHERY AT HAWARI 



IN" the afternoon we left the dunes behind and 

 emerged on flat, roDing country, with broad sand- 

 waves ahead and the purple crags of the Neri running 

 south in an irregular mass of peaks and square-topped 

 ridges, with dark stretches of stones and lava in between. 

 The sand was now the colour of mellow brickdust, with 

 occasional streaks of purplish red and scattered patches of 

 stones of all colours, like those I had picked up in 

 Buseima. Some of the ground looked almost like mosaic 

 work in blues, mauves and reds. Hoping to arrive at 

 Hawari on the morrow, the caravan moved briskly- 

 through the sunset, when the land turned an ugly hot 

 brown and the aching cliffs tore the orange sky with 

 sombre violet crests. We barraked beneath the first big, 

 round sand wave, from where we could see the dark gara 

 of Hawari — a continuation of the Gebel Neri — and while 

 we triumphed in our success as geographers, the retinue 

 developed a beautiful new panic ! 



They had heard that one man had left the Bazama 

 caravan at El Harrash and gone on to Kuf ara. Abdullah 

 suggested that he would have spread all kinds of libel 

 about us and Abdul Rahim grew pale beneath his ebony! 

 The pitiful thing was that Mohammed had so completely 

 lost his nerve that he too was terrified. He had changed 

 very much in the last week. He no longer looked out 

 upon the world with his old, frank, boyish glance. His 

 eyes wavered and fell. He never laughed or sang these 

 days. I think that he was really the only imaginative 



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