THE ELUSIVE DUNES 277 



wards and then, surprised, saw him extricate himself 

 from Mohammed's detaining hands and walk slowly back 

 to his camel, methodically picking up the possessions he 

 had ruthlessly scattered at my peremptory request. 

 "Well, what is it? What has he lost?" I shouted im- 

 patiently. Hassanein waited till he was quite near and 

 then he gave me a withering look and said very slowly, 

 each word enunciated separately: "It — is — a — small — 

 leather — bag — which — the — kaimakaan — gave — him — 

 to — sell — in — Jaghabub. Suleiman — has — left — it — 

 behind!" 



On February 5 we broke camp at 6.30, singularly 

 indifferent to coffee mysteriously mixed with candle- 

 grease and rice, hairy with girba fur, in our anxiety to 

 see the morning mirage. This time the dunes looked 

 even nearer. One could see the wavy furrows along the 

 ridges and every separate golden hillock, yet an hour later 

 everything had vanished and the flat, fawn disk stretched, 

 drab and monotonous, on every side. Suleiman was 

 confident, however, that we should sleep in the dunes 

 that night. Yusuf was cheerfully certain that, as we had 

 not yet seen the Mazul ridge to the west, we should not 

 "see land" for another day. When Beduins are 

 travelling across a big, trackless desert, they always 

 speak of any known country as "the land." It is rather 

 like a long sea voyage with the guide as pilot. He 

 keeps the caravan's head turned in the right direction by 

 the stars and waits to pick up a famihar landmark before 

 making directly for his oasis. At 10 a.m. the old guide 

 uttered something nearly resembling a shriek and threw 

 himself on Yusuf 's neck. "I see the Mazul!" he ex- 

 claimed, "and it is near, very near." Leaving the pale 

 line of distant hillocks to our left, we headed directly 

 north towards other dunes which began to appear, a faint 

 blur on the horizon. The two little nagas edged away to 



