Jaffa drew out his beloved Mauser pistol to see that it was loaded, and
we had nothing to do but wait whilst those weary camels and their escort
wound their way up towards the gap.
*CHAPTER IX*
*Trapping a Caravan*
From where I lay, sprawling on my stomach, on the very edge of that vast
ridge, like a fly clinging to the rim of a cup--my "coffee-cup"--I could
look down on both sides. Inland, the sides of the ridge fell away
steeply but not precipitously; the track from the gap did not zigzag
down, as it did on my other side, but wound and sloped at an easy angle
until I could trace it no farther. The leading horseman of the caravan
was, possibly, two miles away, and perhaps a thousand or fifteen hundred
feet below me--one could not judge heights or distances with any
accuracy--the middle portion of the winding caravan was hidden by a
swelling of the mountain slope, and the tail end, indistinct, lost
itself in the stifling haze which filled the valleys below. I watched
those first few mounted men. They kept on halting and waiting, going on
again and stopping, as though the camels could not keep pace with them.
I turned my head the other way, and looked down the precipitous curtain
of rocks which fell almost sheer into the extraordinary hollow below me.
The red turban and flowing white cloak of the old villager showed up--a
bright spot against the dark rocks--as he scrambled hastily to join his
people, tiny little dots moving about between the boulders which strewed
the bottom of the "coffee-cup". I could not see the crack through which
we had entered the hollow, because the huge walls surrounding it
overlapped there, but I marvelled how we had managed to climb the path
without slipping and being dashed to pieces below. I really did not
believe it possible for a camel to negotiate it in safety.
"Surely a camel cannot go there?" I asked Jaffa.
"Yes, camel go down, safe; horse cannot; Bedouin leave horses behind
them."
"Will they bring them up to the gap?"
Jaffa did not think they would, and I devoutly hoped that they would
not.
I thought how old Popple Opstein's face would have beamed, and his
yellow hair stood up, if only he had been here with me on that edge of
rocks. Yes, here I was literally on the edge of civilization, where all
my life I had longed to be. How my chum would have chaffed me about
that if he saw me now! Perhaps in a few hours, if he had the luck to be
landed, he would see me.
And, thinking of yellow hair, perhaps little Miss Borsen, if she too
could see me and could realize what might soon happen, would treat me as
a man. More likely than not she would only have smiled in her
tantalizing, irritating way, and told me how uncomfortable I looked.