JDJ1YJLJT JL X
extra men over our evening meal. We also had other
visitors, for 'Ali Jahman had gone off before we dismounted
at Kharza to scour the surrounding country for Badawin
encampments with the idea of buying a sheep for our dinner.
He had only encountered a single family of the Shaiba sub-
section of the Ghafran, his own group, but they had no
animals worth purchasing. They had, however, scented the
prospect of dinner and during the evening an old man and
two lads came over to our camp to share our rice. That they
did with a gusto suggesting that they had not had a square
meal for some time.
At sunset all eyes were riveted on the darkening western
sky in search of the moon's young crescent, but our seeking
was in vain and we turned to our dinner with the knowledge
that we had been granted a day's respite from the fast. The
official calendar, in the preparation of which I had played a
modest part with the- assistance of the Nautical Almanac, had
allowed only 29 days for Sha'ban, but the opening and ulti-
mate breaking of the fast are inexorably dependent on the
sighting of the moon, failing which the maximum tale of
thirty days must be allowed to each month concerned. So
Shtfban had automatically lengthened out to 30 days, and we
thought optimistically that, by the general law of compensa-
tion, we should only have to face 29 days of fasting.
On the whole the day had passed off well enough and we
had covered 20 miles. The proceedings had only been marred
by a slight altercation arising out of an unauthorised adjust-
ment of our loading arrangements. I had insisted on my
boxes, full of instruments, bottles and other easily damage-
able articles, being carried in a vertical position, but found
that during the march they had been carelessly piled up,
three to a camel instead of two, to facilitate a redistribution
of the heavier loads of the commissariat animals. The
intention had been laudable enough, but it was essential that
everyone should understand that my possessions should not
be exposed to any risk of dama/ge ; and my objection was
received in a reasonable enough spirit of accommodation,
though I felt that a vague undercurrent of irritation had been
left behind by the incident. Fahad was indeed suborned to