124 TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 
to the ground. After he realised he still lived we had 
to listen to his complaints, which embraced everything 
from petitions to Allah, allusions to Kismet, to ordinary 
swear words consigning the tree and the bruises to 
altogether impossible places. It grew bitterly cold. 
A breeze sprang up and dashed the sand in little sprays 
about us. Then it got colder still, and darker ; pre- 
sently night would fall and find us unprepared. We 
guarded the ponies, and the men with nothing but a 
couple of shikar knives, cut thorn hurriedly, and we 
could not cry, “ Hold, enough ! ” until a goodly pile had 
been collected. We started a fire then and sat about 
it holding the ponies by us. A comical group. The 
fire warmed us in front, but oh, the cold where the fire 
was not. I kept turning round and round like a meat- 
jack. We sat on like this in great discomfort until 
twelve o’clock. We had on drill jackets, so were very 
coldly clad. Then — a shot on the silence, cracking 
suddenly like ice splitting on a frozen lake. Crack 
again. We replied ; and after a waste of cartridges on 
either side a dark mass loomed on our limited horizon, 
and the camel-men called words of endearment to the 
lost hunters. We were huffy enough to have dismissed 
the whole caravan and left ourselves stranded, but 
feigned to be propitiated by stories of how they lost 
their way and the compass, for a Somali will lose, as 
he can break, anything. The sight of our tents being 
erected and the prospect of bed and warmth mollified 
us as nothing else could have done, and we turned 
in as soon as the cook produced some soup. The 
men had to collect wood in the dark — a thing they 
