Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/256

242 shade, attracts the weary traveller. Herein lies the danger, that this succession of forced marches will finally bring on utter exhaustion. To this danger we were especially exposed, from the long route we took. Merely to go from Suez to Sinai and return, is comparatively easy: for that is but six days either way, and the traveller can rest at Sinai a week if he chooses before he begins his homeward march. But when the time of the return journey is doubled, the exposure is quadrupled; for the process of exhaustion goes on in a compound ratio, and is very likely to end in illness, which in this helpless situation, utterly separated from all chance of relief, at once becomes a serious matter. I had once had a narrow escape. The day after the ascent of Serbal, I was completely used up, and that night was threatened with fever; and now Dr. Post, who was so wiry and active, and who seemed incapable of fatigue, was in danger of breaking down.

On the second day after leaving Nukhl, we attempted a forced march, starting at six o'clock, so that by eleven we had done what we ought to have been satisfied with doing by noon. We had been five hours in the saddle, and had done the half of a full day's work. I then observed for the first time the Doctor's spirits flag. He dismounted, and threw himself under a juniper bush with a look of exhaustion that I had never seen in him before, and told me to ride on, and that he would soon join me. I thought my place was beside him under that juniper bush. Could our friends at home have seen us at that moment, they would have felt an anxiety which they were happily spared, since they did not hear of it till it was all over.

After an hour and a half, we started again, riding and walking bu turns till a little after four o'clock, when we