RETREAT 279

somewhat bitter to the taste and constipating in its effect—
an antidote, as I was to learn, to the powerful salts of the
Haifa water. The green sprouts of the Abal are pounded up
by the Badawin women to make a dye, and its dry wood is by
far the best fuel of the desert—altogether a beneficent plant,
and as widespread as beneficent. In Najd they call it Aria
and seem to ignore most of its possible uses.

At 3 a.m., after an all too short but refreshing sleep, we
were on the move again, steering half-way between Altair and
Vega ; but we had not been going two hours when they began
clamouring for a halt. The dawn will soon be upon us,
they said; it is time to pray, by which they meant it was time
to think of coffee ! The fire was soon ready and the water
aboil, while I lay stretched on the sand and slept blissfully till
they roused me for the prayer. Then we sat round for the
sorry but welcome thimblefols of milk and coffee that fell to
our lot. And soon we were again in the saddle to ride into the
dawn—a pinkish flush slowly widening in the sky to our right
front until the sun's golden orb flooded the vast ocean of
rolling dunes with the light of day. A pair of larks piped
to each other in the cool, still air of the morning—the
notes of the sexes being, as I thought, very different—and a
raven sailed past us presumably to prospect for food at our
last halting-place.

We passed by a lofty dune of peculiarly beautiful lines and
curves, but were taken aback to find that the advance-party
had halted for the dawn prayer only a little way beyond it.
We had come but twelve miles or so from our night camp and
it was difficult to believe that the baggage-train had made no
better progress than that in the nine hours that had elapeed
between their starting and the time for prayer Yet there
was no mistaking their traces—the spot where they had
lighted a fire for their coffee and the line formed in the sand
by their prostrations. They bad probably had trouble in the
darkness and gone astray, but the simple fact rem&in£d that
they had made little progress aad titere could be fitlle doubt
that we would after all cateh them up again.

To our right and converging towards our front lay the
tract known as Hadhat al Qata. At intervals & group of