THE WATERLESS WASTE 315

dimmed his vision without damping his spirits. Another
moon and he would be back again with his little wife at
Mecca, but his thoughts often strayed in another direction.
With his earnings in my service he might add to Ms respon-
sibilities, and Bisha was renowned for its women. So they
said and thither we would be going, and Sa'dan was pensive
these days, pondering the pros and cons of bigamy.

It was a perfect night for sleeping under the stars—cool,
cloudless and windless. All too soon they roused me and we
marched through the darkness over a wide flat plain with
Jupiter going before us. The atmosphere was extraordinarily
luminous and the dark shapes of man and beast stood out
sharply against a curious light, for which it seemed difficult
to account. The planet was bright enough to cast shadows but
could scarcely have been responsible for all the light that en-
veloped us, which was perhaps due to the reflection of myriads
of stars in the crystal mirrors of the rain-washed sands.

We marched about ten miles in starlight and halted for
refreshments and prayers somewhat earlier than usual soon
after Jupiter had sunk below the horizon. By now the store
of raw meat was nearly exhausted, but Salim and Suwid
seemed to have an inexhaustible supply which they pro-
duced mysteriously in cautious quantities from the depths of
their saddle-bags. I asked no questions and took the tendered
rations, chewing them unobserved in the dark. Presumably
the others also had secret stocks. At the halt I lay down to
sleep until prayer-time, after which we had our slender ration
of dates, dipping them in butter or mill? according to taste
before consigning them to our mouths. I had taken sometime
to develop this habit, so deep-seated in the Arabian character,
but now all forms of food were grist to my mill. My com-
panions squeezed their dates into cup-like receptacles, with
which to ladle the liquid butter into their mouths, but that
was more than I could stomach.

At dawn I found a slight dew upon the ground and on the
bushes. The sun rose upon us from behind, disclosing a f«-
flung scene of long parallel NE.-SW. ridges with shallow
valleys between them, averaging about a mite in width. The
desert herbage was withered everywhere by the long droog&fc,