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366 by letter, in carefully made block capitals, the message repeated by the man whose eye was glued to the lens of the telescope.

The desert spread its immensity before them.

Far away to the southwest, a dark smudge of cloud against the dancing horizon showed where Abu Saida and Abu Jezra, the most advanced outpost of the British, across the Diyalah, lay baking under the brassy sun. A blue-green island in the tawny sea betokened Deli Abbas; the caravan routes, threading their way hither and yon across the vast emptiness, looked for all the world like streaks of foam left on the placid surface of the unrippled ocean by some vessel long since hull down over the horizon.

Here and there, attracting the eye rather by motion than color, a black bar, like a water-logged spar, bespoke a random Aram; his aba merging into the desert background as soon as motion ceased. Brown patches, as of floating seaweed, resolved themselves into camel-hair khayyams of Bedouins; their scattered flocks like schools of slow-moving fish.

The men were silent, impressed by the dreary majesty of the scene unrolled like a map before their feet. The garish sun beat down out of a brazen sky on the tortured world. Under its rays objects five miles away were well-nigh as distinctly seen as if half a mile distant in a less