Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/40

16 sixty marches distant; if we take your road and we all die of thirst in the desert, I should be held responsible for the loss of the lives, and your paper could not speak to defend me." Hassan's dramatic description of the scene of his being blamed by the Prophet for losing these valuable lives if he trusted to a "paper," had more to do with his gaining his point than pure conviction as to whether we were on the right road or not. From El Agia, as Saleh's men said, they knew every stone on the desert, but in this part they had to trust to Hassan.

During the whole of this first day we forced the baggage camels on at their best pace, travelling by my compass in a south and south-easterly direction. The arrangement I had made with Gabou for my own caravan, which arrangement Ismail had agreed to when Gabou suggested our travelling with them, was that we should travel a little to the west of the El Agia camel tracks, but keep parallel to them. When we halted that night I spoke to Ismail about this, and asked him to keep to this part of the agreement-that is to say, to travel parallel to, and not on, the track. Hassan objected, as it meant slower travelling. Still pressing on after a short rest, Hassan zigzagged the caravan over stony ground with the object of losing our trail, as our caravan, consisting of about 160 camels, was an easy one to track up.

We travelled fast until mid-day of the 10th, when we were obliged to take a rest owing to the extreme heat. We were in an arid waste; not the slightest sign of vegetation or anything living but