340 THE EMPTY QUARTER

chattered incessantly to those who rode with him, telling
them tales of his own experiences and achievements in many
a raid, tales of long marches and lean days on the desert
borders of Oman and tales of hospitality in desert booths of
the great Shaikhs with the coffee and the meat that make
glad the heart of man. The weary camels seemed somehow
to respond automatically to the new mood that had settled
on the men. The dreary drag changed suddenly to a race
with time during those last two hours before sunset. Never
in all my experience have I seen men drive and camels march
as they drove and marched that day while there remained
light to bring them to camp and fodder and fuel before night-
fall. But the sun went down with never a sign of the
welcoming sands beyond the eternal gravel. And still we
went on.

We halted for the sunset prayer, and, absolutely deadbeat,

I heaved a sigh of relief that at last our labours were over for

the day. But I was mistaken, for no sooner had we got

through the service and partaken of another drink of water

all round, than Zayid gave the order to mount and continue

the march. I was too weary to protest or argue, and followed

suit meekly enough. To camp where we were would have

been to renounce all hope of coffee for the night, and that

was more than my companions could stomach. On the other

hand we had during the half hour before sunset seen frequent

traces of ancient camel-paths, scored in the gravel plain and

dating back many years to the epoch of rain and pastures

that had preceded the twenty years' drought. In those days

the Arabs had brought out their grazing camels as far as this

into the desert, the animals needing no water for long periods

and the men existing on their Tnilk. It was, therefore, a

reasonable inference that there could not be much more left

of the gravel plain and that, perhaps, a short march would

bring us to the sands, where we could certainly hope to find

dead bushes to make a fire withaL So we not only marched

but actually quickened our pace from a steady walk to a

slow trot of something like five miles an hour.

Everywhere now we saw abundant evidences of the recent
rain, of which we had indeed met with some slender indica-