The Hidden Treasure
In the very early morning I looked out, and saw what
appeared to be three little mounds of reddish earth lying in
front of my hut. These, in the strengthening light, resolved
themselves into the sleeping forms of my retainers, obliterated
under desert sand. In the fullness of time they stirred, crawled
as from a chrysalis, shook out their turbans, and were ready
for tea, which the ladies soon provided.
The wind still swished along, a noise of fine falling particles
betraying its invisible presence. To wear a hat was out of
the question. I enveloped myself in the brown abba, tightly
pinned under the chin; climbed, and crouched with my
back to the gale on the pack-mule; and we started for the
Persian hills across another flat stretch of desert; Alidad,
with one sinister eye shut, led the way and held my animal
by a halter.
The weather, which hid the world from us, also hid us
from the police: if there were any about, they lurked some-
where behind the curtain of dust which moved as we did.
On our right hand we passed Qal'a Seifi, a dim huddle of
dilapidated houses with a vague shadow of a man digging in a
ditch, seen for a moment and lost. The desert rose and fell
in small undulations imprisoned in mist, sprinkled with bushes
of aghul and camelthorn, and the bitter colocynth along
the ground.
Beside the wide dry bed of the Gawi Rud the last police
post showed suddenly square and lonely: though we could
easily have skirted it in our misty privacy, Alidad and the
smuggler both rightly thought that a passport, when it
exists at all, should be used as much as possible, and walked
up boldly to a young man in blue uniform who was busy
in the cooking of the garrison dinner.
These litde posts are inhabited by six policemen, but most
of them were out looking for smugglers with an admirable
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