CHAPTER II

RETREAT

Nor Muslims1 land nor land of infidels — the Empty Quarter !

— 'ABDUL

THE call to prayer roused us before dawn to the day's work.
The night had been chilly as we lay in the open, having sent
the tents ahead, and we wanned ourselves round the fire
sipping coffee. Our supply of dates was all but exhausted and
little remained of them but the two skins which had been
provided for my personal use by Ibn Jiluwi and which I had
rigorously refused to broach, placing them under the special
charge of Sa'dan to be used only in some extremity. The
public store had been scandalously squandered without
thought for the morrow, and even the camels had been surrep-
titiously fed on dates to make up for poor pastures. We had
indeed been using up our stores at the rate of double rations
each day and now we had to depend on rice alone, which
involved a daily expenditure of water on which we had not
reckoned. Ibn Suwailim optimistically estimated that we
might reach Naifa in three days, while I protested that we
should ration ourselves on the assumption of a five days'
march. But the optimists triumphed, and the dawn of the
fourth day saw the last of our water consumed. A vigorous
forced march brought us to Naifa at midnight that day, bat
many of them had leisure to repent their lack of foresight
during the blazing march of that afternoon*

Soon after 6 a.m. we started off eastward {or slightly north
of east) along the trough of the fourth Hfcwaya valtey, a great
channel about 500 or 600 yards in width and miming between
parallel ridges which became dune-massifs as we advanced
and finally culminated in a great moraine of rounded Mi-
locks at the eastern extremity of the depression. Hitherto