THE CAMELS BREAK DOWN 
537 
April 26th. At daybreak, whilst the men were occupied 
with getting the tent down, and preparing the caravan 
for a start, I set off alone, on foot, to try and find a 
passage eastwards. From that point I travelled on foot 
all the way to the Khotan-daria ; consequently I was 
no longer able to calculate the distance from the camel’s 
paces. Instead of that, I adopted the device of counting 
my own, an occupation which greatly interested me. 
Every hundred paces I went was so much space won 
towards “ land ” : and with every thousand my hopes of 
safety rose a degree. 
Meanwhile, with my compass In one hand and my 
field-glass in the other, I hastened eastwards, due east- 
wards ; for there ran the river of safety. The camp, 
the camels were soon lost to sight behind the summits 
of the sand-hills. My only companion was a solitary fly, 
which I regarded with unusually friendly eyes. Otherwise 
I was alone, absolutely alone, in the midst of a death-like 
silence, with a sea of yellow sand-dunes before me, rolling 
away in fainter and fainter billows right away to the 
horizon. Deeper Sabbath peace never brooded over any 
graveyard than that which environed me. The only thing 
wanting to convert the simile into actual fact was the 
headstones to the graves. 
I soon fancied the dunes were not so high as usual. I 
tried to maintain the same level as far as possible, by keep- 
ing to their crests and circling round the highest points. I 
knew the poor camels would have many a toilsome, many a 
weary step to take in my wake. A bewildering chaos of 
ridges, lying north-east to south-west, and east to west, were 
flung across one another in the strangest fashion. Our 
position was desperate. The dunes burst up to heights of 
140 to 150 feet. As I looked down from the top of one 
of these giant waves, the depression at my feet, on the 
sheltered side of the dune, looked a long way below me, 
at a giddy depth. We were being slowly but surely 
killed by these terrible ridges of sand. They impeded 
our advance ; yet over them we must. There was no 
help for it, no evading them. Over them we must — a 
