Survivor: The Autobiography Part 15

Between two dunes there appeared three poplars, standing close together. We sank down at their base, exhausted with fatigue. Their roots, too, must derive nourishment from below. We took hold of the spade, intending to dig a well, but the spade slipped from our hands. We had no strength left. We lay down and scratched the ground with our nails, but gave up the attempt as useless.

Instead, we tore off the fresh leaves and rubbed them into our skins. Then we collected dry, fallen twigs, and made a fire on the nearest crest as a signal to Islam, should he prove to be still alive, which I very much doubted. The fire might also, perhaps, attract the attention of a shepherd in the woods along the Khotan-daria. But even if a shepherd should see this fire in an area of deathly silence, he was more likely to become frightened and believe it was the desert spirit who haunted the place and practised witchcraft. For fully two hours we kept the fire going, regarding it as a companion, a friend, and a chance of rescue. Nowadays, those who are shipwrecked at sea have other means of sending out their SOS in moments of extreme danger. We had only this fire, and our eyes were glued to its flames.

The night was coming to an end, and the sun, our worst enemy, would soon rise again above the dunes on the eastern horizon, to torment us anew. At four on the morning of 4 May we started off, stumbling along for five hours. Then our strength gave out. Our hope was again on the decline. In the east there were no more poplars, no more tamarisks, to stimulate our dying vitality with their verdure. Only mounds of sand, as far as the eye could reach.

We collapsed on the slope of a dune. Kasim's ability to dig out cold sand for me was gone. I had to help myself as best I could. For fully ten hours we lay silent in the sand. It was strange that we were still alive. Would we have strength enough to drag ourselves through one more night our last one?

I rose at twilight and urged Kasim to come. Hardly audible was his gasp: 'I can't go on.' And so I left the last remnant of the caravan behind and continued on alone. I dragged myself along, and fell. I crawled up slopes, and staggered down the other side. I lay quiet for long periods, listening. Not a sound! The stars shone like electric torches. I wondered whether I was still on earth, or whether this was the valley of the shadow of death. I lit my last cigarette. Kasim had always received the b.u.t.ts, but now I was alone, and so I smoked this one to the end. It afforded me a little relief and distraction.

Six hours had pa.s.sed since the beginning of my solitary journey, when, totally overcome with feebleness, I sank down by a new tamarisk, and went off into the doze which I feared, for death might come while I was asleep. As a matter of fact, I hardly slept at all. All the time, in the grave-like silence, I heard the beating of my heart and the ticking of the chronometers. And after a couple of hours I heard the swish of steps in the sand, and saw a phantom stagger and struggle to my side.

'Is that you, Kasim?' I whispered.

'Yes, sir.'

'Come! We have not far to go!'

Heartened by our reunion, we struggled on. We slid down the dunes; we struggled upwards. We would lie motionless where we fell, in our battle against the insidious desire for sleep. We slackened our pace, and grew more and more indolent. We were like sleep walkers; but still we fought for our lives.

Suddenly Kasim grabbed my arm and pointed downwards at the sand. There were distinct tracks of human beings!

In a twinkling we were wide awake. It was plain that the river must be near! It was possible that some shepherds had noticed our fire and had come to investigate. Or maybe a sheep, astray in the desert, had been searched for by these men who had so recently pa.s.sed over the sand.

Kasim bent down, examined the prints, and gasped: 'It is our own trail!'

In our listless, somnolent state, we had described a circle without knowing it. That was enough for a while; we could not endure any more. We collapsed on the trail and fell asleep. It was half past two in the morning.

When the new day dawned, on 5 May, we rose heavily, and with difficulty. Kasim looked terrible. His tongue was white and swollen, his lips blue, his cheeks were hollow, and his eyes had a dying gla.s.sy l.u.s.tre. He was tortured by a kind of death-hiccup, which shook his whole frame. When the body is so completely dried up that the joints almost creak, every movement is an effort.

It grew lighter. The sun rose. From the top of a dune, where nothing obstructed the view towards the east, we noticed that the horizon, which for two weeks had revealed a row of yellow sawteeth, now disclosed an absolutely even, dark-green line. We stopped short, as though petrified, and exclaimed simultaneously: 'The forest!' And I added: 'The Khotan-daria! Water!'

Again we collected what little strength we had left and struggled along eastward. The dunes grew lower, we pa.s.sed a depression in the ground at the bottom of which we tried to dig; but we were still too weak. We went on. The dark-green line grew, the dunes diminished, stopped altogether, and were replaced by level soft ground. We were but a few hundred yards from the forest. At half past five we reached the first poplars, and wearied, sank down in their shade. We enjoyed the fragrance of the forest. We saw flowers growing between the trees, and heard the birds sing and the flies and gadflies hum. At seven o'clock we continued. The forest grew thinner. We came upon a path, showing traces of men, sheep, and horses, and we thought it might lead to the river. After following it for two hours, we collapsed in the shade of a poplar grove.

We were too weak to move. Kasim lay on his back. He looked as if he were going to die. The river must be quite near. But we were as if nailed down. A tropical heat surrounded us. Would the day never come to an end? Every hour that pa.s.sed brought us closer to certain death. We would have to drag ourselves on to the river before it got too late! But the sun did not go down. We breathed heavily and with effort. The will to live was about to desert us.

At seven p.m. I was able to get up . . . Again I urged Kasim to accompany me to the river to drink. He signalled with his hand that he could not rise, and he whispered that he would soon die under the poplars.

Alone I pulled myself along through the forest. Thickets of th.o.r.n.y bushes, and dry fallen branches obstructed my way. I tore my thin clothes and scratched my hands, but gradually I worked my way through. I rested frequently, crawled part of the way on all-fours, and noticed with anxiety how the darkness grew denser in the woods. Finally the new night came the last one. I could not have survived another day.

The forest ended abruptly, as though burnt by a fire. I found myself on the edge of a six-foot-high terrace, which descended almost perpendicularly to an absolutely even plain, devoid of vegetation. The ground was packed hard. A withered leafless twig was sticking out of it. I saw that it was a piece of driftwood, and that I was in the riverbed of the Khotan-daria. And it was dry, as dry as the sandy desert behind me! Was I to die of thirst in the very bed of the river, after having fought my way so successfully to its bank? No! I was not going to lie down and die without first crossing the Khotan-daria and a.s.suring myself that the whole bed was dry, and that all hope was irretrievably gone . . .

Like the beds of all desert-rivers in Central Asia, that of the Khotan-daria is very wide, flat, and shallow. A light haze floated over the desolate landscape. I had gone about one mile when the outlines of the forest on the eastern sh.o.r.e appeared below the moon. Dense thickets of bushes and reeds grew on the terraced sh.o.r.e. A fallen poplar stretched its dark trunk down towards the riverbed. It looked like the body of a crocodile. The bed still remained as dry as before. It was not far to the sh.o.r.e where I must lie down and die. My life hung on a hair.

Suddenly I started, and stopped short. A water-bird, a wild duck or goose, rose on whirring wings, and I heard a splash. The next moment, I stood on the edge of a pool, seventy feet long and fifteen feet wide! The water looked as black as ink in the moonlight. The overturned poplar-trunk was reflected in its depths.

In the silent night I thanked G.o.d for my miraculous deliverance. Had I continued eastward I should have been lost. In fact, if I had touched sh.o.r.e only a hundred yards north or south of the pool, I would have believed the entire riverbed to be dry. I knew that the freshets from melting snowfields and glaciers in northern Tibet flowed down through the Khotan-daria bed only in the beginning of June, to dry up in the late summer and autumn, leaving the bed dry during the winter and spring. I had also heard that in certain places, separated sometimes by a day's journey or more, the river forms eddies, which scoop the bed into greater depths, and that the water may remain the year round in these hollows near the terraced sh.o.r.e. And now I had come upon one of these extremely rare bodies of water!

I sat down calmly on the bank and felt my pulse. It was so weak that it was hardly noticeable only forty-nine beats. Then I drank, and drank again. I drank without restraint. The water was cold, clear as crystal, and as sweet as the best spring water. And then I drank again. My dried-up body absorbed the moisture like a sponge. All my joints softened, all my movements became easier. My skin, hard as parchment before, now became softened. My forehead grew moist. The pulse increased in strength; and after a few minutes it was fifty-six. The blood flowed more freely in my veins. I had a feeling of well-being and comfort. I drank again, and sat caressing the water in this blessed pool. Later on, I christened this pool Khoda-verdi-kol, or 'the Pool of G.o.d's Gift' . . .

My thoughts now flew to Kasim, who lay faint from thirst on the edge of the wood on the western sh.o.r.e. Of the stately caravan of three weeks ago, I, a European, was the only one that had held out till the moment of rescue. If I did not waste my minutes, perhaps Kasim, too, might be saved. But in what was I to carry the water? Why, in my waterproof boots! There was, in fact, no other receptacle. I filled them to the top, suspended them at either end of the spade handle, and carefully recrossed the riverbed. Though the moon was low, my old track was plainly visible. I reached the forest. The moon went down, and dense darkness descended among the trees. I lost my trail, and went astray among th.o.r.n.y bushes and thickets, which would not give under my stockinged feet. From time to time, I called 'Kasim!' at the top of my voice. But the sound died away among the tree trunks; and I got no answer but the 'clevitt' of a frightened night owl.

If I lost my way, perhaps I would never again find the trail and then Kasim would be lost. I stopped at an impenetrable thicket of dry branches and brush, set fire to the whole thing, and enjoyed seeing the flames lick and scorch the nearest poplars. Kasim could not be far away; he was certain both to hear and to see the fire. But he did not come. I had no choice but to await the dawn. At the foot of a poplar, out of reach of the fire. I lay down and slept for some hours. The fire protected me against any prowling wild beasts.

When dawn came the night fire was still glowing, and a black column of smoke was rising above the forest. It was easy now to find my trail and the place where Kasim lay. He was still in the same position as the night before. Upon seeing me, he whispered: 'I am dying!' 'Will you have some water?' I asked, letting him hear the splashing sound. He sat up, dazed and staring. I handed him one of the boots. He lifted it to his lips and emptied it to the last drop. After a short pause he emptied the other one, too.

Thomas, an English explorer, made the first crossing of the Empty Quarter or Rub al Khali, 19301.

Never before had the great South Arabian desert of Rub 'al Khali been crossed by white man, and the ambition to be its pioneer seized me as it had seized every adventurous Englishman whose lot has been cast in Arabia. But before I tell of the manner of my camel crossing and of the things that befell, I must briefly introduce the reader who is uninitiated in matters Arabian to the lie of the land.

'The World,' said the medieval Moslem geographer, 'is in shape like a ball, and it floats in the circ.u.mambient ocean like an egg in water, half in and half out. Of the exposed portion one half const.i.tutes the Inhabited Quarter, while the remaining half is the Empty Quarter, the Rub 'al Khali placed in the barren wastes of Arabia.'

An extravagant estimate, this, of the place of our wanderings; yet it is no mean desert that approaches an area as big as England and France together. That it should have remained terra incognita till after the icy Polar regions, the tropic sources of the Amazon, and the vast interior s.p.a.ces of Asia and Africa had been made to yield up their secrets to Western curiosity, is strange. An Arabian explanation was given to the traveller Charles Doughty, by his genial companion Zayed as Shaykhan, that worthy, with his finger upon a page of Arab script, declaring the matter in this wise: 'G.o.d has given two of the four parts of the earth to the children of Adam, the third part He has given to Gog and Magog, the fourth is the Rub 'al Khali void of the breath of life.'

Lack of rain and merciless heat indeed make of this a place where the Persian poet would have us believe 'the panting sinner receives a foretaste of his future destiny'. Certainly human life can be but spasmodically supported, and then mostly round the desert's fringes, where, among semi-barbarous nomadic tribes, hunger and the raid are Nature's pruning-hooks.

Native suspicion and an insular outlook combine with insecurity of life to keep the infidel intruder at arm's length, and he who would travel hopefully and usefully requires some apprenticeship and acclimatisation: needs must he speak the tongue, know the mind, grow a beard, dress and act like his desert companions, betraying, for instance, no squeamishness over drinking water, pestiferous though it might be, drawn from unsampled waterholes come upon in the burning sands, and not improved by churning in strong-smelling animal-skins carried on the march. But to our story!

On the 5 October 1931, the SS British Grenadier, homeward bound from Persia, arrived off Muscat harbour at dawn, and there picked me up, by arrangement, from a small boat. Two nights later I was dropped, clothed in native dress, into an Arab dhow we sighted riding at anchor off the central-south Arabian sh.o.r.e. Landing, I made my way to the rendezvous where I had expected a trusted Arab chieftain who had served me on an earlier desert expedition, but I found neither him nor his promised string of riding camels.

Experience had taught me the need of not disclosing my plans to anyone in a land where secrecy of movement at the outset is imperative. My hopes of even making a start were thus dashed, and, sick at my bad luck, I turned up into the Qara Mountains to think and to scheme, while I explored and hunted their forested slopes. More than two impatient months pa.s.sed before despair gave way to reviving hope.

It was the 10 December when at last I set out from Dhufar with a party of desert Arabs that included the famous Sheikh Salih, of the Rashid (Kathir) tribe, twenty-six warriors nearly all of whom could show the scars of wounds, none of whom had I set eyes on before and forty camels. The first day's march was as usual cut short, some of the men returning to the booths to buy a trifling gimcrack with which to gladden the eyes of their beauties far away in the black tents, some for a final watering at the sweet well of the mosque, while skins in which we carried our water were oiled and made watertight, and crude, improvised sacks, which did for pack-saddles, were given a final look over.

Our northerly course, on the morrow, led upward through the dense jungles of the Qara escarpment, where I had reaped a bountiful harvest for the Museum hyenas, wolves and coneys, snakes and lizards, chameleons, birds and b.u.t.terflies; and at Qatan I looked back for a last glimpse of the blue Indian Ocean 3,000 feet below. Waving yellow meadows that crowned the uplands gave place to libaniferous shrubs as we wended our way down the far side, amid red and rugged rocks wherein were groves of the frankincense and myrrh trees that gave rise to the fame of the Arabia of antiquity, of which we gain echoes in the Bible. Never could campfires have been more luxuriantly fragrant.

Soon we were to bid farewell to this pleasant countryside of rippling brooks and gay bird life, the decorative stork by day and the eerie sound of the tree-bat by night. The pebbly gorge of Dauka, by which we descended, grew shallower as we went, and became but a sandy, serpentine depression in the arid wilderness beyond. In such ancient dried-up riverbeds as this is the secret of life, for the night dews that here collect give rise to an arterial way of desert flora across the barren plain and the route of the caravan.

The foothills of the southern mountains soon sank below our horizon in rear, and the vast clean s.p.a.ces of a flint-strewn steppe stretched northward before us. Sand-devils, slender columns of whirling sand, sometimes swept hither and thither; sometimes the skyline danced before us in a hot, shimmering mirage, distorting a faraway bush into an expansive copse, an antelope into some monstrous creature, and generally playing tricks with lakes of illusory water.

For the next two months the stars were my only roof, for I travelled, like my companions, without a tent; and as the thermometer almost immediately fell to 45 Fahrenheit at night, one felt bitterly cold after the hot days in the saddle, wearing the same clothes day and night. The luxury of a tent had to be eschewed, in order to keep camel-loads at a minimum, for there were certain indispensable things to carry rations of rice, sugar, native fat and dates; mapping instruments: a compa.s.s, s.e.xtant, artificial horizon, chronometers, barometers and hydrometer; natural-history skinning instruments, killing-bottles and preserving chests; a rifle, for none goes unarmed in these parts, it being held neither safe nor respectable; and to pay my way, gunnybags stuffed with 3,000 Maria Theresa dollars, which I kept under my saddle by day and my pillow by night.

I had to be careful to conceal my s.e.xtant and keep my star observations un.o.bserved, lest I be suspected of magic or worse, and to this end I always contrived to sleep some thirty or forty yards away from the camp and wait till my companions had settled down for the night. This they did after prayers and hobbling their camels over the best pastures available, lying sprawling around the flickering campfires with their rifle as their only bedding.

A few days' march northward across the gently declining steppe brought us to the waterhole of Shisur, where we dallied for two days to rest our camels preparatory to a nine-days' water-less and hungry stretch westward. This was to be the most dangerous part of my journey, for it is a no-man's-land with a b.l.o.o.d.y reputation for raiding and counter-raiding between the various tribes of these southern borderlands; and as I was moving with Rashidi tribesmen, I was particularly apprehensive of a collision with a party of the Sa'ar tribe, their hereditary enemies, for whom, moreover, the money I carried would doubtless have acted as a magnet.

Yellow sand dunes rose tier upon tier, backing the western reaches of Umm al Hait, the mighty, dried-up river system I had discovered and mapped on an earlier journey; and hummocky summits were crowned with tamarisk, which in these hungry marches brought our camels running up at the glad sight. It is impossible to carry fodder over these long trails, and camels have to fend for themselves, or rather, a small, well-mounted reconnaissance party goes off to discover the best pastures in the neighbourhood before a general move.

Hence the route taken by the desert traveller cannot with certainty be determined; his course will most likely not be the straightest and shortest one between two points, as with an aeroplane in the air or a ship at sea. And thus it came about that although my plan was to cross the sands northward from sea to sea, I here found myself travelling from east to west along the southern bulwark of the sands.

The full force of the tropical afternoon sun in our faces made me appreciate the Bedouin headdress, the long kerchief which can be wound round the face being merciful indeed as a protection from the sun's burning rays, though my lips and nostrils rarely escaped. Glare gla.s.ses I never used, for the reason of possible queer effects on my companions' unaccustomed minds.

'Look, sahib!' said the Arabs riding at my side, one afternoon, and pointing to the ground. 'There is the road to Ubar. Ubar was a great city that our fathers have told us existed in olden times; a city that possessed much treasure and had date gardens and a fort of red silver (gold); it now lies buried beneath the sands, men say in the Rumlait Shu'ait, maybe a few days to the north.'

I had heard of Ubar, an ancient Atlantis of the sands, as it were, from Arab companions of an earlier expedition in the eastern desert, but none could tell of its location. Where my notice was now directed there were deep impressions as of ancient caravan tracks in the hard steppe surface, leading away only to be lost under a wall of sand.

Desiccation of climate through the ages and the extension of the sands, ever encroaching southward, could have brought about its disuse, for it can have led to nowhere worth leading to in historic times, and is now good for nothing. If this local tradition is well founded, Ubar may preserve a memory of the famed land of Ophir, long since lost in the mists of antiquity.

Our course, now trending more to the south, past the dunes of Yibaila and Yadila, was interesting for large, silvery patches in the hollows suggesting a dried-up sea, but which turned out to be sheets of gypsum; though, curiously enough, all along this borderland between sand and steppe, 1,000 feet and more above sea level and today more than 100 miles from the coast, the surface was strewn with oyster and other sh.e.l.l fossils, suggesting that this desert was once an ocean bed.

Beyond Yadila I was next to experience what is extremely rare even for an Arabian explorer, and that was singing sands. As we were floundering along through heavy dune country, the silence was suddenly broken and I was startled for a moment, not knowing what the interruption was or whence it came. 'Listen to that ridge bellowing,' said a Badu10 at my side, and looking to where he pointed I saw away on our right hand a steepish sand-cliff about a hundred feet high.

I was too deeply absorbed in the sound to talk, and there was nothing unusual to the eye. The hour was 4.15, and a slight northerly wind blew from the rear of the cliff. I must often have observed similar conditions, but never before heard any accompanying bellowing, only the spectacle of a film of sand smoking over the sand ridges to build up a shape recalling a centurion's helmet. But here the leeward side of the cliff, facing us, was a fairly steep sloping wall, and maybe the surface sands were sliding; certainly some mysterious friction was in progress on a vast scale to produce such starrling loud booming. The noise was comparable to a deep pedal-note of an organ, or the siren of a ship heard, say, from a couple of cables distant. It continued for about two minutes and then ended as abruptly as it had begun.

The term 'singing sands' seems hardly the most satisfactory one to describe a loud and single note, but it is too firmly established to cavil over, for singing sands are mentioned by quite early Chinese writers, and Marco Polo, who crossed the Great Gobi Desert in the thirteenth century, wrote: 'Sometimes you shall hear the sound of musical instruments and still more commonly the sound of drums.'

We bade adieu to hungry and shivering steppe borderlands, and, turning northward, struck into the body of the sands. The scene before us was magnificent. The sands became almost Alpine in architectural structure, towering mountainously above us, and from the summits we were rewarded with the most glorious panoramas of purest rose-red colour. This Uruq region of the central south must surely be the loftiest throughout all the great ocean of sands.

Our camels climbed arduously the soft slopes, and, slithering knee-deep, made slow progress. No one remained mounted. Indeed, there were places where we had to dig footholds in the sands to enable our animals to climb, other places where we turned back to find an easier way. No horse could have negotiated these southern sands, even if brought here, and the waterless marches behind us, with many consecutive days of ten hours in the saddle, would have made the bringing impossible. A motorcar, too, would surely have charged these slopes in vain.

'The gift of G.o.d' that is the illuminating name by which the Arab nomad knows the camel; and how great is his consideration for her! Time and time again I found myself the only member of our party in the saddle, the Arabs preferring to walk and so spare their mounts, running hither and thither to collect a juicy tuft of camelthorn with which to feed the hungry brutes as we marched along. In the deserts, halts are called, not in accordance with a European watch, but where Nature has, for the nonce, blessed the site with camel pastures. The great ungainly beasts, which you start by despising and learn greatly to admire, are the only means by which you move forward to success or back and out to safety. If camels perish in the remoter waterless wastes, their masters must perish with them.

Christmas Eve was to be a night of excitement and false alarm. We had arrived late in camp, camels had been hobbled and shooed off to the scant bushes, from behind some of which came the brisk noises of merry campfire parties. There was a sudden scream. To me it was like the hooting of an owl or the whining of some wild beast.

'Gom! Gom! Raiders! Raiders!' shouted the excitable Bedouin, leaping to their feet, their rifles at the ready; and my Arab servant came running across to me with my Winchester and ammunition. Our rabias (safe-escorts) of the Awamir and Karab tribes rushed out in different directions into the night, shouting 'We are alert! We are alert! We are So-and-so (giving their names) of such-and-such tribes. These are our party and are under our protection.'11 The object of this was to save us from raiders of their own particular tribes, if such they were, for these would then stay their hand. The cry, I gathered, is never abused: certainly in 1928 I had owed my life, during a journey through the south-eastern borderlands, to my Harsusi rabia, who saved us from ambush by members of his own tribe after these had already opened fire at short range.

Our camels were now played out. Their humps, plump and large at the outset, told a story; for the hump is the barometer of the camel's condition, and ours had fallen miserably away. To move onwards involved raising fresh camels, a contingency that had been foreseen, and Shaikh Salih sent ahead to search the Rashidi habitat. He and I had at the outset counted on the need of four relays, but in the event three proved sufficient.

Propitious rains (over great areas rain does not fall throughout the year) of last season in the sands of Dakaka had given rise to superior pastures, and to that area, therefore, the herds had this year gravitated. At the waterhole of Khor Dhahiyah we acquired a new caravan and pushed leisurely westward towards where our third caravan for the final northward dash across the sands was to a.s.semble.

My companions scanned the sands for sign of friend or foe.

'Look, sahib! that's So-and-so,' my men said, pointing to a camel's foot impression that looked, to me, like any other. 'See! she is gone with calf: look how deep are the impressions of her tracks!' And so, following these in the sands, we came up with the object of our quest.

The accuracy of their divination was fascinating. Reading sand-imprints recalled fingerprint identifying in the West, except that it is far less laborious and slow, and not at all the technical job of a highly trained specialist. In fact, every Badu bred in these sands reads the sand-imprints with the readiest facility, for all creation goes unshod, except on an occasion when a Badu wears socks against extreme heat or cold this being rare, because it is considered effeminate.

The sands are thus an open diary, and he who runs may read. Every one of my companions not only knew at a glance the foot impression of every man and every camel in my caravan, but claimed to know every one of his tribe and not a few of his enemies. No bird may alight, no wild beast or insect pa.s.s but needs must leave its history in the sands, and the record lasts until the next wind rises and obliterates it. To tell-tale sand-tracks a sand-fox and many snakes, hares, and lizards, which I added to my collection, owed their undoing, for their hiding-places were in vain.

Whenever, in future, we halted for the night, generally just before sunset, Hamad, my Murra rabia, would slink back over our tracks for a few miles with my telescope to ensure that we were not being tracked by an enemy, and return just after nightfall with the good news that campfires could now be safely lighted.

I picked up fragments of ostrich eggs, often in a semi-petrified condition, and members of my party had shot ostriches hereabouts in their youth, though these birds appear now to be extinct. So also the rim or white gazelle is becoming rare, though I saw horns lying about, while the common red gazelle and the larger edible lizards are inhabitants of the bordering steppe rather than of the sands, as is the antelope, specimens of which I shot, besides bringing home a young live one.

It is the antelope whose long, straight horns occasionally appear to be a single spear when she runs across your front, thus giving rise, as some suppose, to the ancient myth of the unicorn. This legendary guardian of chast.i.ty allowed none but virtuous maidens to approach it, when its anger turned to joy; and, singularly, today in these southern marches the only musical instrument known is a pipe made of antelope horn, which the Arab maiden plays on the joyful occasions of marriage and circ.u.mcision.

Of animal life in the sands, a small sand-coloured wolf is said to be met with in parts where subsoil water, however brackish, can be reached by pawing; a sand-coloured fox and a lynx relatively non-drinking varieties are commoner; and the hare, the most widespread mammal, is hunted by the Bedouin's salugi12 dog. Of birds I saw very few bustards, sand-larks, sand-grouse, owls, and the most common, a black raven, while old eggs in a gigantic nest show that the Abyssinian tawny eagle comes on important visits.

The full moon before the fast month of Ramadhan found us at the waterhole of Shanna, where my third, last, and much-reduced caravan (13 men and 5 pack animals) was to rendezvous. One of our old camels was ailing, and there is only one way with a worn-out camel in the desert namely, to kill and eat it. The law of Leviticus is also the law of Islam: flesh not lawfully slaughtered is sinful to eat; wherefore the hats went round, and 56 dollars, plus her earnings due from me, satisfied the owner of the almost blind 40-year-old Fatira. The beast was slaughtered, jointed, and divided into heaps after the Arabs had all had a good swig at the contents of her bladder they had done the same to the antelope's bladder and for the joints the Bedouin now cast lots.

In the steppe, where stones availed, they would have grilled the carca.s.s on a heap of heated stones with a fire beneath the Stone Age manner, surely! Here as much as sufficed for a meal was boiled in brackish water, and the rest they allowed to remain uncooked, and so carried it exposed on their saddles, where all the cooking that it received was drying from the heat of the sun. These saddle-dainties the Bedouin were to nibble with great relish in the marches ahead, and to declare to be very good. My own view, I confess, was one to be concealed!

The zero hour for the dash northward had arrived. Star sights and traverse-plotting showed my position on the 10 January, 1932, to be lat. 19 N, long. 50 45' E. My objective, Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, was thus bearing slightly to the east of north, about 330 miles in a straight line across the mysterious sands. Two only of my thirteen Bedouin the Murras claimed to have been over this line of desert before. I had rations left for but twenty-five days.

Clearly, no one could afford to fall ill. A hold-up for ten days, an insufficient rate of progress, a meeting with a party of raiders outnumbering us any of these might spell disaster. Throughout my journey I was screened from any Arab encampments, that, for all I knew, might have been just over the skyline, the single exception being a tiny encampment of Murra, kinsmen of my guide, where an old man lay dying.

It was made up of one or two miserably small tents, roughly spun doubtless by the womenfolk of brown and white camel's hair; tent-pegs that once had been the horns of an antelope; a hammer and a leathern bucket or two these perhaps typical of the belongings of poor nomadic folk, among whom wealth is counted, primarily, in the n.o.ble possessions of camel herds and firearms.

Marching north, the character of the desert sands changed; from the sweeping red landscapes of Dakaka we pa.s.sed through the region of Suwahib, of lighter hue and characteristic parallel ridges in echelon formation; then the white ocean calms of the central sands, succeeded by a rolling swell of redder colour; and with these changing belts the desert flora changed too, the height above sea level falling progressively.

Contrary to expectation, the great central sand ocean was found to be not waterless. We dug down to water at quite shallow depths a fathom and a half or so; but it was so brackish as to be almost undrinkable not unlike Epsom salts both in taste and in its effect on man and beast. There are places where even the camel cannot drink the water, though normally when pastures bring nomads to these parts their camels play the part of distillers, for they drink the water and their masters drink their milk.

The shallow waterholes of the southern sands are sometimes filled in, after water, to hinder a possible pursuer, but in the low, shallowing sands of the north, where patches of hard floor made their first appearance, the waterholes were regular wells, sometimes seventeen fathoms and more deep. They are rare and precious, too, apart from their sweeter contents, for great labour and skill have gone to their making. Both making and cleaning out, which must be done periodically, exact a toll of life, for the soft sides are p.r.o.ne to slip in and entomb the miners, and all that avails for revetment is the branches of dwarf sand-bushes.

Onwards through these great silent wastes my little party moved ever northwards, and my bones no longer ached at the daily demand of eight hours in the saddle. On setting out in the morning the Badu with his first foot forward would mumble some pious invocation a constant reminder of the great uncertainty and insecurity which shadows him: In the name of G.o.d the Merciful, the Compa.s.sionate, Reliance is upon Thee.

There is none other and none equal to Thee.

In the name of G.o.d the Merciful.

Deliverance from the slinking devil; And on Him we rely.

Their inborn philosophy of life is strictly fatalistic, holding that whatever comes to pa.s.s is according to a Divine and inscrutable Will. Their att.i.tude to me, at first sullen and suspicious, changed with growing intimacy as the days pa.s.sed, and they could be, with a few exceptions, cheerful and friendly companions. Under the stimulating effects of a juicy patch of camel pasture come upon unexpectedly, they would break forth into merry chanting, while around the night campfire they never tired of telling me stories from their entrancing folklore.

22 January brought the first of a series of sandstorms, and I pa.s.sed many fitful nights. The hissing of the sand-laden wind, the rattling of pack-cordage, and icy cold feet for the night temperature often fell to within five degrees of freezing point made sleeping out of doors, without a roof over one's head, intolerable.

Eagerly one waited for the dawn. The wind then dropped, and campfires were the scene of huddled, shivering Bedouin who now roused their camels that had been rounded up overnight for safety, and the wretched beasts shuffled off to graze and feel the warmth of the rising sun. For me the nights had tragic results, the sand-drifts having buried my instruments, making some of them of little further use.

But I was on the last lap. And though for many days sweeping, stinging, blinding winds enveloped us in a blanket of yellow mist, a fine morning came when, climbing the towering sandhill of Nakhala, I beheld before me a silver streak of sea along the faraway skyline. Success was in sight. Keeping the coast a day's march, by report, on our right hand, our northerly course carried us through quarry-like country abounding in fossil sh.e.l.ls, the aneroid recording below sea-level readings.

And here we came upon an interesting discovery a lake in this wilderness. For several miles we marched along its western sh.o.r.e. The Bedouin, walking to the edge, brought away large chunks of rock salt that for a width of twenty feet lined its border. There along the water's edge, too, was a line of dead white locusts, desiccated specimens of the large red variety which, collected and thrown alive on to the hot ash of the campfire, sizzles into one of the few delicacies of the Bedouin. Wretched creatures, these locusts, for they seem to delight in swarming out from the thirsty desert in springtime, only to take a suicidal plunge into the first water they come to.

Our lake behind us, we trekked on through bleak stony country, the haunt of owl and wolf, that proved to be the base of the Qatar peninsula. A Gulf sbamal was blowing, but its attendant cold and drizzling rain were powerless to damp the enthusiasm of my poor companions on the eve of a rare payday. They chanted the water-chants which, alas! I should be hearing for the last time, and our thirsty camels p.r.i.c.ked up their ears with eager knowingness. And so, at last, we came to the fort of Qatar's ruler standing bold and beckoning on the rim of the sea. The dim luxury of a bath and a square meal was at hand. I had lost a stone and a half in weight on my 650-mile camel journey, but the great south Arabian desert, hitherto a blank on our maps, had ceased to be an enigma and a reproach.

Wills was an English surveyor who emigrated to Australia, where he served as second in command to Robert O'Hara Burke, on the Victorian Exploration Expedition. After leaving Melbourne on 21 August 1860, the expedition made fast progress to Cooper's Creek, where a depot was left, together with most of the men. Four members Wills, Burke, Gray and King continued to the Gulf of Carpentaria, which they reached on 4 February 1861, thus completing the first transcontinental crossing of Australia. On the return journey Gray died of privation, and when the others reached the Cooper's Creek depot they found it deserted. On 23 April 1861, Wills, Burke and King started for Adelaide, via Mount Hopeless.

Tuesday, 23 April 1861 Having collected together all the odds and ends that seemed likely to be of use to us, in addition to provisions left in the plant, we started at 9.15 a.m., keeping down the southern bank of the creek; we only went about five miles, and camped at 11.30 on a billibong, where the feed was pretty good. We find the change of diet already making a great improvement in our spirits and strength. The weather is delightful, days agreeably warm, but the nights very chilly. The latter is more noticeable from our deficiency in clothing, the depot party having taken all the reserve things back with them to the Darling. To Camp No. 1.

Wednesday, 24 April 1861 As we were about to start this morning, some blacks came by, from whom we were fortunate enough to get about twelve pounds of fish for a few pieces of straps and some matches, etc. This is a great treat for us, as well as a valuable addition to our rations. We started at 8.15 p.m. on our way down the creek, the blacks going in the opposite direction. To Camp No. 2.

Thursday, 25 April, 1861 Awoke at five o'clock after a most refreshing night's rest the sky was beautifully clear, and the air rather chilly. We had scarcely finished breakfast, when our friends the blacks, from whom we obtained the fish, made their appearance with a few more, and seemed inclined to go with us and keep up the supply. We gave them some sugar, with which they were greatly pleased they are by far the most well-behaved blacks we have seen on Cooper's Creek. We did not get away from the camp until 9.30 a.m., continuing our course down the most southern branch of the creek, which keeps a general south-west course. To Camp No. 3. The waterhole at this camp is a very fine one, being several miles long. The waterfowl are numerous, but rather shy, not nearly so much so, however, as those on the creeks between here and Carpentaria.

Friday, 26 April 1861 We loaded the camels by moonlight this morning, and started at a quarter to six: striking off to the south of the creek, we soon got on a native path which leaves the creek just below the stony ground, and takes a course nearly west across a piece of open country. Leaving the path on our right at a distance of three miles, we turned up a small creek, which pa.s.ses down between some sandhills, and, finding a nice patch of feed for the camels at a waterhole, we halted at 7.15 for breakfast. We started again at 9.50 a.m., continuing our westerly course along the path: we crossed to the south of the watercourse above the water, and proceeded over the most splendid salt-bush country that one could wish to see, bounded on the left by sandhills, whilst to the right the peculiar-looking flat-topped sandstone ranges form an extensive amphitheatre, through the far side of the arena of which may be traced the dark line of creek timber. At twelve o'clock we camped in the bed of the creek at Camp No. [3], our last camp on the road down from the Gulf, having taken four days to do what we then did in one. This comparative rest and the change in diet have also worked wonders, however, the leg-tied feeling is now entirely gone, and I believe that in less than a week we shall be fit to undergo any fatigue whatever. The camels are improving, and seem capable of doing all that we are likely to require of them. To Camp No. 4.

Sat.u.r.day, 27 April 1861 We started at six o'clock, and, following the native path, which at about a mile from our camp takes a southerly direction, we soon came to the high sandy alluvial deposit which separates the creek at this point from the stony rises. Here we struck off from the path, keeping well to the south of the creek, in order that we might mess in a branch of it that took a southerly direction. At 9.20 we came in on the creek again where it runs due south, and halted for breakfast at a fine waterhole with fine fresh feed for the camels. Here we remained until noon, when we moved on again, and camped at one o'clock on a general course, having been throughout the morning SW eight miles.

Sunday, 28 April 1861 Morning fine and calm, but rather chilly. Started at 4.45 a.m., following down the bed of a creek in a westerly direction by moonlight. Our stage was, however, very short for about a mile one of the camels (Landa) got bogged by the side of a waterhole, and although we tried every means in our power, we found it impossible to get him out. All the ground beneath the surface was a bottomless quicksand, through which the beast sank too rapidly for us to get bushes of timber fairly beneath him; and being of a very sluggish stupid nature he could never be got to make sufficiently strenuous efforts towards extricating himself. In the evening, as a last chance, we let the water in from the creek, so as to buoy him up and at the same time soften the ground about his legs; but it was of no avail. The brute lay quietly in it, as if he quite enjoyed his position. To Camp No. 6.

Monday, 29 April 1861 Finding Landa still in the hole, we made a few attempts at extricating him, and then shot him, and after breakfast commenced cutting off what flesh we could get at for jerking.

Tuesday, 30 April 1861 Remained here today for the purpose of drying the meat, for which process the weather is not very favourable.

Wednesday, 1 May 1861 Started at 8.40, having loaded our only camel, Rajah, with the most necessary and useful articles, and packed up a small swag each, of bedding and clothing for our own shoulders. We kept on the right bank of the creek for about a mile, and then crossed over at a native camp to the left, where we got on a path running due west, the creek having turned to the north. Following the path we crossed an open plain, and then some sand ridges, whence we saw the creek straight ahead of us running nearly south again: the path took us to the southernmost point of the bend in a distance of about two and a half miles from where we had crossed the creek, thereby saving us from three to four miles, as it cannot be less than six miles round by the creek. To Camp No. 7.

Thursday, 2 May 1861 Breakfasted by moonlight and started at 6.30. Following down the left bank of the creek in a westerly direction, we came at a distance of six miles on a lot of natives who were camped on the bed of a creek. They seemed to have just breakfasted, and were most liberal in their presentations of fish and cake. We could only return the compliment by some fishhooks and sugar. About a mile farther on we came to a separation of the creek, where what looked like the main branch turned towards the south. This channel we followed, not however without some misgivings as to its character, which were soon increased by the small and unfavourable appearance that the creek a.s.sumed. On our continuing along it a little farther it began to improve and widened out with fine waterholes of considerable depth. The banks were very steep, and a belt of scrub lined it on either side. This made it very inconvenient for travelling, especially as the bed of the creek was full of water for a considerable distance. At 11 a.m. we halted, until 1.30 p.m., and then moved on again, taking a SSW course for about two miles, when at the end of a very long waterhole it breaks into billibongs, which continue splitting into sandy channels until they are all lost in the earthy soil of a box forest. Seeing little chance of water ahead, we turned back to the end of the long waterhole and camped for the night. On our way back Rajah showed signs of being done up. He had been trembling greatly all the morning. On this account his load was further lightened to the amount of a few pounds by the doing away with the sugar, ginger, tea, cocoa, and two or three tin plates. To Camp No. 8.

Friday, 3 May 1861 Started at seven a.m., striking off in a northerly direction for the main creek.

Sat.u.r.day, 4 May 1861 Rajah was so stiff this morning as to be scarcely able to get up with his load. Started to return down the creek at 6.45, and halted for breakfast at 9 a.m., at the same spot as we breakfasted at yesterday. Proceeding from there down the creek we soon found a repet.i.tion of the features that were exhibited by the creek examined on Thursday. At a mile and a half we came to the last waterhole, and below that the channel became more sandy and shallow, and continued to send off billibongs to the south and west, slightly changing its course each time until it disappeared altogether in a north-westerly direction. Leaving King with the camel, we went on a mile or two to see if we could find water, and being unsuccessful we were obliged to return to where we had breakfasted as being the best place for feed and water.

Sunday, 5 May 1861 Started by myself to reconnoitre the country in a southerly direction, leaving Mr Burke and King with the camel at Camp No. 10. Travelled SW by S for two hours, following the course of the most southerly billibongs; found the earthy soil becoming more loose and cracked up, and the box track gradually disappearing. Changed course to west for a high sand ridge, which I reached in one hour and a half, and continuing in the same direction to one still higher, obtained from it a good view of the surrounding country. To the north were the extensive box forests bounding the creek on either side. To the east earthy plains intersected by watercourses and lines of timber, and bounded in the distance by sand ridges. To the south the projection of the sand ridge partially intercepted the view; the rest was composed of earthy plains, apparently clothed with chrysanthemums. To the westward another but smaller plain was bounded also by high sand ridges running nearly parallel with the one on which I was standing.