I MOUNT A CAMEL
By the next morning the coast was more distinct and we were still
approaching it. But our progress was now very slow, and we could depend
only on the land breeze of early morning and the sea-breeze of the
evening.
The heat of the day was tremendous, or seemed so to me even under
the awnings which were rigged fore and aft and kept constantly wet.
Metal-work on deck became too hot to touch, and even the painted wooden
bulwarks burned through one’s sleeves when leaned upon.
The Arabs worked unwillingly, dropping down and sleeping in any patch
of shade that presented itself, and I constantly heard the horrid swish
of Jakoub’s whip as he woke them. I spent the long intolerable days
dripping in a hammock chair on deck, feverishly watching the sweep of
the sun across the sky and calculating the hours to be endured before
he would again become red and harmless in the healing vapours of the
western horizon, and the sea-breeze would surprise me again with its
chilliness. Or I gazed with aching eyes at the palpitating sand of the
coast, wondering if it would be possible for me to live and move on it
at all?
Edmund and Welfare had the acquired eastern habit of sleeping during
the hot hours, and spent most of the time in their cabins, when they
were not required on deck.
At that blessed hour before sunset, however, we met on deck, and Hassan
brought up ingeniously cooled drinks for the party.
It was on one of these occasions that I expressed my fears as to the
heat of the desert journey.
“It won’t be as bad as this, really,” Edmund said. “We’ll land you in
the evening when Jakoub has got the camels together and loaded. You’ll
travel through the night and make for a place where you can spend the
day under shelter. Then it will be only one trek of a few hours to
the nearest station on the railway. I’ve never been on that Western
Railway, but I’m afraid they’re fairly rotten old carriages. If you get
a day-train it will be beastly hot and dusty. Five or six hours will
get you into Alexandria.”
“That certainly does not sound alarming.”
I had a twinge of something like disappointment at the idea of my
adventure dwindling to such modest dimensions. Once it was over, I
should have liked to tell people at the Athenæum and other comfortable
places at home about “the long trek on camel-back across the burning
sands.”
I would have welcomed quite a considerable degree of real discomfort as
a basis for exaggeration within the limits proper to a clergyman.
“I shouldn’t mind trying a part of the journey in the daytime,” I said.
“Perhaps not,” said Captain Welfare. “But the natives won’t allow their
camels to work in the heat.”
“I thought a camel could stand any amount of heat!”
“Not them. They’re the softest beasts that walk. They drop in their
tracks in the heat, and if it’s cold at night they have to be rugged up
better than a horse.”
“There is more rot believed by people at home about camels,” said
Edmund, “than about any beast of the field. What do you suppose is a
camel’s load?”
“I confess my ideas are very vague. I couldn’t tell you to a ton.”
They both laughed.
“I think it’s the natural history books that are given as Sunday
school prizes that are responsible for the average Englishman’s ideas
about camels. Their proper load for regular work is 300 lbs. Of
course they can take more for a short time. The natives overload them
badly themselves, but they won’t let us when we hire them. You bet
they watch that. And he’s got to be watered every second day to keep
his condition--not about once a week as people imagine. As his pace
is two-and-a-half miles an hour, a horse can really get just as far
between drinks. All the same he’s a most invaluable beast. We could
do nothing without him on the desert. Oh, you’ll get to like them all
right when you’re used to them.”
As a matter of fact, now that the time was getting so near, I began to
have qualms of uneasiness at the idea of riding on one of these uncouth
beasts.
I like riding my own familiar cob, but am somewhat nervous of mounting
even a strange horse, and to me a camel had never been anything but
an object placed for my amusement and instruction in the Zoological
Garden. There he had always amused and instructed me from the other
side of a tall and impregnable iron fence.
I knew of course that trippers in Egypt always got photographed mounted
on a camel with the Sphinx and a Pyramid in the background, as if
all their tripping in Egypt were done on camel-back, and they had
not in fact gone from Cairo to Ghizeh in an electric tramcar. But I
now reflected that these were doubtless special camels kept for the
purpose, broken, as it were, to trippers--heart-broken no doubt!
But to have to mount and control the ordinary camel of Arab commerce,
picked up by Jakoub on a wild and inaccessible part of the desert, I
felt, might be a very different proposition, and one making a heavy
demand on the courage of a middle-aged and naturally timid vicar.
“I hope,” I said, “I shall be able to ride the beast all right.”
“Oh! you’ll manage that easily,” Edmund said. “They’re perfectly quiet.
We’ll show you how to mount, and after he gets up, you have only to sit
there and oscillate.”
It sounded quite simple, and yet there were vague misgivings left in my
heart.
“How many camels are we taking?” I asked.
“Well, we’ve roughly 2,000 lbs. of stuff. That will take six baggage
camels. Four could do it for such a short journey, but the natives are
sure to insist on our hiring six. Then there’ll be a riding camel for
you and one for Jakoub.”
“By the way, what is this merchandise I am shepherding?” I asked.
“We’ll have to explain all that,” said Edmund, cutting in as Welfare
rubbed his great chin thoughtfully. “We’ve got to give you a lot of
rather elaborate directions. I suppose we might as well do it now as
later.”
“Yes,” added Captain Welfare, “the whole thing is a rather delicate
business. If it’s not worked right we’d spoil our own market, and you
see we can’t let Jakoub know too much.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” I said.
“You must not tell him anything,” said Welfare, “though he has to hand
the stuff over to our agent, and even that has to be done quietly. The
stuff is--well, it’s a kind of chemical. It’s one of the rare earths
used in making incandescent gas-mantles. There’s hardly any of it in
Egypt and there’s tremendous competition to get it. That’s why if it
was known as we’d brought in such a big lot as 2,000 lbs. the price
would go flop, and we’d lose a lot of money.”
“I see.” This really did seem to me an obvious and easily
comprehensible proposition.
“And so,” said Edmund, taking up the argument, “we want you to take it
into Alexandria as curios, and specimens and things you have collected
in the desert. That is if you’re asked any questions, which you
probably won’t be.”
I could feel their eyes upon me as I took in their suggestion that I
should become a party to what certainly seemed to me a transaction very
near akin to fraud. I was amused to feel that they both expected me to
be much more shocked than in fact I was.
As long as I was satisfied that nobody was going to be injured or
defrauded, the mere “verbal inexactitude” was to me only a harmless
breach of one of those conventions which, as I have already explained,
I regard as maintained for the guidance of persons of inferior
intellect.
This attitude of mind may seem rather shocking to some quite
intelligent people. I suppose it represents the effect on me of my
theological training.
“Don’t you think,” I asked after a rather pregnant pause, “that my
position would be a somewhat uncomfortable one if it were discovered
that my desert collections consisted entirely of rare earth for
incandescent mantles?”
“It would,” Edmund admitted, “but there’s not the slightest risk of
that happening. Do you think I would ask you to do it if there were?”
“Honestly, Edmund, it is becoming difficult for me to estimate the
limits of your possible requests.”
Edmund smiled gaily, with a look of relief, but Captain Welfare still
watched me, leaning forward with his hairy hands on his knees and an
expression of anxious solicitude in his large pathetic eyes.
“If you like, sir,” he suggested, “we could easily put in a layer of
shells, and fossils, and native ornaments; things a clergyman _would_
pick up on the desert.”
“No, thank you,” I said snappishly.
“There’s not the remotest fear of anyone wanting to examine the cases,
or asking any questions, as long as they’re under your charge. I merely
suggested you should yourself say they were your collections, or
whatever you like to call them, when putting them on the railway. I’ve
worked it all out. Now, listen, we put you ashore at a quiet spot on
Egyptian territory. If the stuff were dutiable, that would of course
be smuggling. Certainly if we landed at Alexandria the Customs people
would examine it, and we have told you why we don’t want it known that
we have brought the stuff into Egypt. The camel-men won’t bother, as
long as they’re paid about double the proper price for their camels,
and at the station, for a hundred piastres backshish, you will have
both station-master and guard ready to shine your boots with their
tongues.
“At Alexandria you will go straight to Van Ermengen’s hotel. He knows
all about the consignment, and Jakoub will follow you with the cases
as soon as he is able to get a vehicle to put them in. Then you will
hand them over to our agent in Alexandria, who will call for them with
a note signed by us, which you will have posted yourself in Alexandria.
Then you will have finished with the business, and Jakoub will get back
to us if he can, and go to the devil if he can’t.”
As thus stated by Edmund, the proposition seemed to me quite a harmless
_ruse de guerre_. I was suspicious of all commercial methods, and
nothing would have induced me for instance to co-operate in anything
like the trading habits of our grocer, who was nevertheless, as I
have already mentioned, one of the most eminent members of my Sunday
congregation. But I saw nothing in this transaction to which anyone
could object who kept his conscience in reasonable subjection, and I
said so frankly.
Captain Welfare’s tension immediately relaxed. He leaned back in
his chair with a sigh and wiped his forehead and upper lip with his
handkerchief. As the evening was now cool, and no amount of heat
ever seemed able to make Captain Welfare perspire, this was a sure
indication that he had been in a condition of considerable mental
agitation. He drew a long breath and I saw at once that he was under
the necessity of making a speech. This happened to him sometimes, just
as other men get periodical attacks of asthma or gall-stones.
“Mr. Davoren, sir,” he began, after clearing his throat in the most
approved oratorical style, “I think this is the third time as we’ve had
to put before you a proposition that must have seemed distasteful to
you. A proposition you might have been justified in refusing without
examination, if so be you had been a man as is not prepared to look
into things and do the square thing, and the kind thing, and the
generous thing----”
“Oh, stow it, Welfare!” said Edmund.
But Captain Welfare was not to be stopped now, any more than a body of
stampeded mules. He ignored Edmund, who stretched out his legs, shut
his eyes, and pretended to go to sleep.
“I want to put it on record, sir, as I appreciate--as _we_ appreciate
the handsome way you have met us on these occasions. You’ve acted
as a gentleman, sir, because you are a gentleman, and as a man
because--well--because you _are_ a man.”
There was a prolonged groan from Edmund.
“I wish to thank you, sir, for the spirit in which you have met all our
suggestions.”
I felt extremely embarrassed.
The _Astarte_ lay becalmed and almost motionless between the still
glowing desert shore and the vast disc of the sun, now falling through
a mass of slate-coloured vapour to his setting. In all this golden and
purple immensity there was no living thing in sight outside the ship,
which was suspended like a fragment of dust in a sunbeam. The only
human sound was Captain Welfare’s egregious clap-trap.
He was talking away exactly as if he were moving a vote of thanks to
the chairman of a board of guardians or a town council, or proposing
a toast at an Oddfellows’ supper. He was in that state of orgasm
which oratory of this type always produces in the lower middle-class
Englishman.
This habit is ridiculous enough, even among its normal surroundings
of stuffy rooms, half-cleared tables, and black-coated pork-butchers
and pawnbrokers. But here, poised in the silence where sea and sky and
desert met, where Nature seemed to have unveiled her immensity in a
sacramental moment, Captain Welfare ceased to be absurd.
Edmund and I both felt him as something almost obscene--a sacrilege.
I managed to murmur, “Thank you,” when he finished, and I was indeed
thankful for silence when it came.
But grateful as the silence was, it seemed necessary to say
something, if only to prevent the discovery by Welfare that he had
not the sympathy of his audience, and so the development among us of
embarrassment and discomfort.
I asked him how long he thought it would be before we reached the
landing-place.
“We’re close to it now,” he said, “not above thirty miles or so, but of
course we’re at the mercy of the wind and the current.”
“The current?” I asked. “I thought there was practically no tide in the
Mediterranean.”
“No, there’s no tide to speak of. But coastal currents? My word! You
pick up a point ashore, and see how we’re drifting now.”
Distant as the coast was, I could see that we were indeed slipping
slowly back on the way we had come.
“The worst of these currents is that you can’t reckon on them like
the tide. They’re wind-driven, or caused by heat, I suppose, but when
you’re ashore don’t you go bathing on this coast without you know where
you are. There’s often a four-knot current inshore that would sweep any
man away, and often does. But if we get a breeze to-night, we ought to
land you to-morrow.”
As he spoke the last limb of the sun sank below the horizon, lighting
it for a moment with the mysterious green flash that is sometimes seen
in these waters, and is said to be due to its rays shining through and
illuminating the water at the edge of the sea.
At the same time the sea, which had looked like a bath of mercury,
suddenly blackened to northward of us, and the _Astarte’s_ booms swung
out to starboard with the cheery rattle of sheets running through
the blocks. The ship leaned over with a little thrill as of a happy
awakening, the ripple began to play again at her bow, and we were under
way once more.
“That’s better,” said Captain Welfare, rising from his chair. “Would
you like to see just where we are on the chart?”
I thanked him, and we all three went below to his cabin.
A section of an Admiralty chart was pinned out as usual, with the
_Astarte’s_ position from day to day marked on it in pencil.
Captain Welfare put a broad forefinger close to the last mark.
“That’s where we are now,” he said, “as near as we can tell from
soundings. As you see yourself, there’s no land-marks anyone could pick
up hereabouts. Those figures show you it’s all shoal water between us
and the land, until we get here.”
He indicated a place a little farther east along the coast, where there
was a small bay or indentation.
“Here you see there’s water enough for the _Astarte_ up to within a few
yards of the beach, and there’s some tall sandhills and a bit of an old
ruined sheikh’s tomb that we can pick up even at night with this moon.”
“Yes; but are there any human beings or camels there?”
Edmund laughed. “I think,” he said, “you still suspect us of some ill
doings. Do you really think we are going to maroon you on a waterless
desert with a single cut-throat for companion?”
“Don’t be an ass, Edmund; but if you know anything about the business,
tell me how we’re going to get camels here?”
“From the Arabs,” said Captain Welfare; “there’s a tribe of them always
in camp at this time of year a little inland of where we’re going to
land you. At least so Jakoub says, and he knows the district. They’ll
be getting in their barley crop now. They do some camel breeding here
too. Jakoub says he is sure to find them here, because the calves will
be still too young to go on trek. You’ll see now, Mr. Davoren, how
we’re bound to depend on Jakoub in a business like this is.”
“I suppose it would be impossible,” I suggested, “to find an Arab with
Jakoub’s knowledge, who was not also a scoundrel?”
“I don’t believe,” said Welfare solemnly, “that such a man exists. A
straight man couldn’t know all Jakoub knows.”
This remark silenced me. I had so often myself observed this inverse
ratio between knowledge and virtue.
At dinner that evening I was somewhat oppressed by the feeling that
it was probably my last night on the _Astarte_. We had been such good
friends on board. The little cabin had come to look so familiar and so
homelike to me; the whole experience had been so strange and withal so
delightful to me, that I could not but feel saddened at the thought of
leaving it all. Instinctively I shrank a little from the unknown and
solitary experiences that awaited me in a strange land.
I knew too that I would be missed, if only because three are much
better company than two--where men are concerned at all events. Without
conceit I knew I should be missed in a much deeper sense than that. I
am one of those insignificant but cornerless people who make a good
third in such close quarters as ours were, and I was conscious that
Edmund and Captain Welfare liked each other the better for my presence.
Captain Welfare openly expressed his regret at my impending departure,
and it required some skilled manœuvring on the part of Edmund and
myself to head him away from another speech.
“By the way,” I said, “you have forgotten to tell me what your plans
are after you leave me, and when we are to meet again?”
“Oh! we’ll pick you up in Alexandria in a few days,” said Edmund.
“We’ll see you off home, unless you make up your mind to continue the
cruise.”
“I wish that were possible,” I said regretfully; “but it isn’t.”
“When we put you ashore, sir,” said Captain Welfare, “we’ll get out
to sea as best we can, and get in the regular track of boats bound to
Alexandria. If the police are on the look-out for Jakoub, they’ll board
us either there or when we’re signalled at the harbour. I only wish
you knew as much about the Gyppie police as we do, and could enjoy the
laugh same as we will.”
There was an unusual vindictiveness in Captain Welfare’s tone that made
me wonder for a moment what were the experiences that had so prejudiced
him against this branch of the public service.
But this was not a time for uncharitable thoughts, and I put this one
aside.
“By the way,” Edmund said, “we’ll have to look you out some clothes. I
presume you didn’t bring any tropical kit?”
“No,” I told him; “Bates fixed me up with these blue serge things and
several pairs of white flannel trousers, most of which I am afraid I
have soiled. He has also included a complete clerical rig-out, without
which he never allows me to travel.”
“Good!” said Edmund. “You have got some dog-collars then? Bates is a
pearl of great price. That is the only thing that was worrying me.”
“He has packed some clerical collars and a stock, if that’s what you
mean.”
“What on earth is a stock?” Edmund asked.
“It is the black silk thing below what you call a dog-collar. The two
combined are the symbol of the Apostolic Succession. A stud, or a
button-hole in front, is a split--the stigma of Schism. It is commonly
associated with a white tie, an arrogant assumption of individual
blamelessness only possible in a heretic.”
“Well now, that’s something I never understood before,” said Captain
Welfare. “You mean a church parson isn’t better than another man,
or don’t reckon to be, outside of his official position? Out of his
uniform, eh?”
“I don’t know that I meant all that,” I said, rather taken aback by
this literal interpretation of my frivolous talk. “I’m not much of
a theologian, but I think what you say is something very like the
Anglican idea.”
“Well, I like it,” he said; “I’ve known preachers at home as has worn
the biggest kind of white ties, and it’s some of their ways as has
stuck in my gizzard and made me the back-slider I am. Mr. Davoren, when
I get ashore, I’d like to join your church. I’d take it kindly if you’d
baptise me, sir.”
I said I should be delighted. I did not see what else I could say under
the circumstances, although I have a rooted objection to proselytes of
every description.
“The question is,” said Edmund impatiently, “whether Welfare’s drill
kit or mine would fit you best? We’ve both got plenty of clean spare
suits, and I can rig you up with a pith helmet. I was only worried
about the collar. You won’t want one in the desert; but it’s rather
important you should turn up in Alexandria in clerical kit.”
“I can manage that all right,” I said indifferently. “I suppose my own
clothes would be too warm?”
“Much too warm. You couldn’t stand them.”
Edmund spoke decisively and I sighed, for I dislike wearing clothes
that have not been made for me. Edmund is two inches taller than me,
and of late I have shown distinct signs of what my father used to call
“the elderly spread.” On the other hand Captain Welfare, though about
my own height, is immensely larger in all his other dimensions.
There is however, fortunately, a remarkable flexibility about men’s
clothes, and I was able to pick out a couple of suits which I could
wear with comfort and without loss of self-respect. Indeed I can say
more than that. So persistent is human vanity that I found myself
admiring my own appearance in the clean white drill. It gave me, I
thought, a look of youth and distinction to which I imagined I had long
since renounced all claims.
Edmund caught me in front of the mirror deciding on the most becoming
tilt of the pith helmet. This persistence of the peacock in one’s
nature is very disturbing.
I was woken very early in the morning by a rattle which shook the whole
ship. I started up and realised that it was the anchor chain running
out. My long journey in the _Astarte_ was at an end.
I went straight on deck, and saw the desert close to me for the first
time.
The sun had not yet risen, but the dawn was foretold by a lilac glow in
the east where Venus still shone illustrious as a morning star.
The _Astarte_ was at anchor in a little cove, evidently the one I had
been shown on the chart, for on my left I could see in the twilight the
tall sandhills mentioned by Welfare. They were strangely carved by
the wind to sharp, delicately curved edges with a surpassing beauty of
line. Beside them on a lower level rose the little rounded dome of the
sheikh’s tomb, over which leaned a single tall, crooked date palm. Away
to the right of this the sand stretched to the horizon in wave after
wave, yellow and silver in the faint light, with violet shadows between
the vast undulations, and a few black patches of camel-scrub here and
there.
The wind had almost gone. It ruffled the sea outside to a dark grey,
but around us in the little bay the water lay silent, polished and
opalescent under the growing dawn.
The dinghy was already being rowed ashore, and I recognised Jakoub’s
back, sitting crouched like a bird of prey in the stern-sheets.
The crew were busy getting the sails off the ship and stowing them.
They worked quickly and in a strange uncanny silence.
Edmund and Captain Welfare were both on deck, already dressed. They
stood together watching the crew, and speaking almost in whispers
with an unwonted look of anxiety on their faces. Captain Welfare kept
searching the shore with his telescope.
Very soon I saw the morning star fade out in a red glare that filled
the east, and then the sun came up, climbing swiftly from the horizon.
For a moment the desert sparkled with the lustre of jewellery; then
the effect passed, and its surface settled into the burning yellow and
white of the common light of day.
But the smooth shallow sea of the desert’s margin turned from the
pearly opalescence of the dawn to a glory of blue such as I had never
imagined. It was not the blue of the sea or sky, but the incredible
blue of a butterfly’s wing. It brought to my mind childhood’s
dream-pictures of the glory of the river that flows round the Throne of
God, and my heart ached with the splendour of it.
The sun came as a tyrant. It seemed to take but a few moments before
he was clear of the vapour of the horizon, and the heat of the day had
begun.
I went below to my cabin. I dressed myself, and sorrowfully bestowed
what I needed for my journey in a hold-all.
The hot day seemed intolerably long. I lay on deck trying in vain to
read. Their manifest anxiety kept Edmund and Welfare in an irritable
silence.
The cases I was to take with me were brought on deck. They were roped
and sealed, and the word “Anticas” was painted on the outside in large
black letters, with some Arabic characters below which I took to be a
translation of this lie.
The boat was lowered and they were stowed in it with my hold-all and
all brought ashore and laid on the beach. There was nothing more to do,
and by four o’clock our nervous tension was becoming almost unbearable
when the sandy sky-line was broken by the tall silhouette of a camel,
with a man mounted on it, advancing majestically towards us.
Captain Welfare had a long look at him through the glass.
“Thank God!” he said. “It’s Jakoub all right. The others must be
following him.”
Jakoub put his camel into a trot and came rapidly down to the beach. I
watched with anticipatory dread the process of making the camel kneel,
or as it seemed to me, fold itself up. Jakoub sprang lightly off and
tied the animal’s nose-rope round one of its knees to secure it. The
camel stretched its long neck along the ground and began nosing in the
sand for something eatable.
Jakoub came out in the dinghy and was aboard in a few minutes.
Captain Welfare met him, and coming aft announced, with a look of
relief, that the baggage camels and one for me were only a mile or so
behind Jakoub.
“We’re lucky,” he said, “for I think there is a land breeze coming
up, and the sooner we’re out of this the better. I only hope for your
sake, Mr. Davoren, it isn’t a ‘khamsin.’ I’d be sorry if you made the
acquaintance of the desert in a sand-storm.”
I went below to finish my packing. Hassan showed me with pride the
hamper of provisions and wines he had provided for the journey,
together with two great water-jars.
When I came back on deck, rather self-conscious in my white suit and
helmet, I saw the camels crouching on the beach, and heard with dread
their deep guttural grumblings and threatenings as their loads were
roped on to them.
But what surprised me most of all was the sudden appearance among us of
a stranger. This was a young clean-shaved Egyptian of the middle class,
dressed in a suit of drab linen with a tarboosh on his head.
Edmund laughed as he came up to us with an obsequious salaam.
“Let me introduce you to your dragoman,” he said.
Then as the man looked up with a smile of insufferable insolence, I saw
that it was Jakoub!
He was not merely disguised by clothes; it was the total change of
the consummate artist. It seemed that he _was_ another man. He had
deliberately revealed himself by his smile, and when that faded from
his face, it was impossible even to think of him as Jakoub, utterly
impossible to recognise him.
Edmund drew me aside.
“You’re not in the least likely to want this,” he said, “but you never
know. You had better have it in case----”
He gave me a revolver, which I had unwillingly to put in my pocket. It
seemed an enormous size and weight, and I always have a feeling that
these things go off of themselves. Still, when I thought of Jakoub, I
was glad to have it.
“Here’s another dozen rounds,” said Edmund, “you can give me the lot
back in Alexandria.”
The crew were already busy making sail under Welfare’s directions.
I said good-bye to him with great regret. Edmund came ashore with me in
the dinghy.
I looked back and said, “Do you know this is the first time I have seen
the _Astarte_ from outside?”
“So it is,” said Edmund. “Well, she’s pretty, isn’t she?”
She looked very beautiful lying there, “Idle as a painted ship upon
a painted ocean,” her lines aspiring to the tall pointed bows and
the noble length of her bowsprit, her tall pointed sails drooping
gracefully to their own reflection in the water.
“I am very, very sorry to leave her,” I said.
“I hope,” said Edmund gravely, “that whatever happens you’ll always
keep a kindly feeling for her in your heart.”
Edmund led me up to my camel. The brute slewed its head round and eyed
us with a supercilious and malevolent expression that reminded me of
Jakoub. It kept its mouth open, ready to protest against whatever was
done to it, showing a great bunch of teeth in its lower jaw. As we
approached it made a noise as if it were gargling its throat.
“All you’ve to do,” said Edmund, “is to nip on to the saddle quickly
and hang on to this wooden upright. He’ll start getting up the minute
you’re on and that throws you about a bit, but once he’s on his feet
you’ll be all right and quite comfortable. Cross your feet over his
left shoulder, and hold on to the upright at first till you’re used
to the motion. Keep him in a sort of half trot if you can, it’s less
tiring than walking. But he’ll follow Jakoub’s beast anyhow.”
“What am I to do if he runs away?”
“He won’t do that. He’ll keep in the string all right.”
I watched Jakoub mount, and with a great effort of will-power followed
his example.
I stretched one leg over the brute and was pulling myself into my seat
to an accompaniment of appalling growls, when an earthquake seemed to
take place. I was flung forward, then backwards and forwards again, and
shot up skywards at the same time, but remained safe on the bundle of
mats they called a saddle. I found myself at a dizzy height with the
camel’s greyish white neck stretched out a long way below me, and a
single slender rope in my hand to guide him with.
However, the brute stood quiet. He was now silent and showed no
disposition to do untoward things.
“Well done,” Edmund called up to me; “you’ll be all right now.”
“I’m all right,” I said, “unless he turns round and chews my feet.”
“He’s a tame beast. Don’t be uneasy. Good-bye.”
He reached up and I managed to catch his hand.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Good-bye.”
As he went back to the dinghy, I could hear the click of the
_Astarte’s_ windlass getting up the anchor. Our string of camels moved
off across the sandhills, and I felt nervous, insecure, and very
lonely.