Page:Orczy--the gates of Kamt.djvu/55

 shingle, and rising upland, and monotony, and slowly-creeping mortal ennui.

I fought against it honestly as hard as I could. I was ashamed that I, the stronger physically when we started, should be the first to show signs of weakness, but somehow this ennui, caused by the ceaseless, terrible, appalling monotony of the wilderness, and of the slow shambling gait of the camels, developed into a malady which robbed me totally of sleep. Still, I said nothing to Hugh, but I could see that he knew what ailed me, for the efforts he made to distract my thoughts became positively touching.

One night, when we crouched as usual under our tents smoking, I asked:

"Girlie, how long is it since we left Wady-Halfa?"

"Thirty-one days," he replied quietly.

Yes, quietly. He could speak with equanimity of thirty-one times twenty-four hours, of thirty-one times 1440 minutes spent in gazing at the same sand, the same scraps of coarse grass, the same limitless blue sky, the same horizon far away.

"And how many miles do you reckon that we have travelled due west?"

"Nearly six hundred, I should say."

I said nothing more, and he went outside the tent, where I could see him presently gazing out longingly towards the west. I went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "Girlie," I said, "we have wandered thirty-one days in the wilderness. If everything goes at its best, and if we are very economical with our food, we can perhaps wander another thirty and no more."

He did not reply, and I had not the courage or the cowardice to continue with what was going on in my mind. But I knew that he guessed it, for later