THE ELUSIVE DUNES 271 



without halting for an indefinite time, but the slower 

 he goes the longer he will last. Mohammed was a bad 

 camel-man. Frightened of the desperately long route 

 in front of him, which had to be traversed in 12 days, 

 he was anxious to push on at first in order to have some- 

 thing up his sleeve; yet the loads, chiefly fodder and 

 water, would grow lighter every day. I refused, there- 

 fore, to do more than 12 or 13 hours a day, especially 

 as our camels would not feed properly when it was dark 

 and cold. The best way of travelling is to start at 

 5 A.M., barrak for a few hours at midday, feed the 

 camels as the afternoon grows cooler and walk late into 

 the night. But it means a double loading and we had 

 not enough men or energj'^ for that, so our beasts had 

 to accustom themselves to feeding by starlight night and 

 morning. 



That first day we had a cool wind, so we all walked 

 cheerfully across the unbroken stretches of monotonous 

 fawn sand. The world had become a level disk again, 

 infinitely flat, its smoothness polished by the glaring 

 sun till the mirage broke the edges, which seemed but 

 a few yards away. I asked old Suleiman how he knew 

 the way. "You put Jedi over your left eye and walk 

 a long way — thus. Then you turn a little toward the 

 kibla ^ and walk still more and then, if Allah wills, you 

 arrive." It was not exactly a reassuring answer after 

 Abdullah's vagaries, so I asked him where Jedi was at 

 the momenta "I don't know," he replied with engag- 

 ing frankness. "Where is she?" I showed him by 

 the compass and he trudged on perfectly placidly, 

 nibbling a date from the Httle store he kept tied up in 

 a corner of his tattered jerd. 



When the sunset had painted our narrow world 

 flame-red and, one by one, the stars had come out to 



* The kibla is turned towards the ka-aba at Mecca. 



