NO WATER LEFT 
547 
estimated their height was this. I stationed myself a 
little way off a dune along the top of which the caravan 
was moving'. I knew by previous measurement the exact 
height of one of the camels. On a pencil I marked 
notches at equal distances apart, each space representing 
the height of the camel. Then, holding the pencil up 
to my eye, I measured how many notched spaces were 
required to cover the height of the dune ; in other words, 
I measured how many camel’s-heights it was. Apart from 
that my eye alone told me that the camel was an extremely 
small object as compared with the dune, which was more 
like a high hill. It will readily be undenstood that, 
over sfiorantic billows of sand like this we could not 
advance very rapidly. We were compelled to make many 
a detour, involving great loss of time, in order to avoid 
them ; in fact, we were sometimes compelled to travel for 
a time in the exactly opposite direction from that in which 
we wanted to go. 
Yolldash kept close to the water-tanks, in which he 
could hear the last few drops of the precious fluid splash- 
ing against the sides, and whined and howled every time 
he heard a splash. Whenever we stopped, uncertain 
which way to turn, he yelped, and sniffed at the tanks, 
and scratched in the sand, as if to remind us that we 
ought to dig a well, and to let us know that he wanted 
water. When I lay down to rest, the dog would come 
and crouch in front of me, and look me straight in the 
eyes, as if to ask me whether there really was no hope. 
I patted him, and spoke soothingly to him, and pointed 
towards the east, trying to make him understand that 
there was water there. At that he would prick his ears, 
jump up, and run in that direction ; but he soon came back 
again downcast and disappointed. 
After some trouble Islam Bai and I climbed to the top 
of a pyramidal dune, and took a long and searching 
reconnaissance of the country ahead through my field- 
glass. But there was no abatement of the billows of 
sand, no gap in the dunes towards which we could steer 
our course. Everywhere the same curdled sea of giant 
