THE WATERLESS WASTE 351

your compass. God is great indeed ! Look, you people, is
it not so ? That star it is we should be steering on, and you
would have had us go all awry. We should have struck
Hamam and not Sulaiyil, if we had followed you. There was
at least general rejoicing—for there had been genuine mis-
giving—that we were indeed on the right track, but they
marvelled how I should have guided them in the darkness
even with a compass. I showed them the luminous points,
and they marvelled yet more at the notorious intelligence of
the Franks. By the face of God ! ejaculated Salim, did he
not know all about Shuwaikila before he had even set eyes
on the great sands ? And did he not tell us at Naifa the
direction and distance of Sulaiyil. By God ! it was very
sooth he spoke then though we knew it not. I had indeed
made a rough computation of the position of Naifa in
relation to Sulaiyil and told them before starting that we
should need 112 hours of actual marching to cover the 560
kilometres (350 miles), which I reckoned to be the approxi-
mate distance. In the end our total marching-time proved
to be 111 hours, though we probably marched on the whole
at a better average rate than five kilometres an hour and
therefore covered a distance nearer 600 kilometres than the
555 suggested by my adopted rate—the distance between
Naifa and Sulaiyil by our route being 375 miles.

The clouds closed again over Jupiter and I marched on in
the darkness, musing how the great planet had seemed to
follow the fortunes of my adventure from its earliest be-
ginnings—when at Riyadh in November I used to wake at
the Muadhdhin's raucous cry before the dawn to see him gazing
down upon me from his mansion in the Sickle, seemingly
mocking at me with its great query-mark. I had shuddered
then in agonies of nervous irritation as the days went by
with no sign of the King's will. And each day Jupiter, in all
his radiance, had but renewed the question. Was it to be
or not to be ? Then had come the great day of rejoicing when
the King had spoken, and thence onward the planet had
coursed nightly through the sky guarding us as we wandered
through the desert, and each night lie gained almost imper-
ceptibly on the query-mark which ever followed him. And