We checked the men at the bottom of their narrow sand-fold, whilst we studied the railway. Everything was indeed peaceful and empty, even to the abandoned blockhouse in a rich patch of rank grass and weeds between us and the line. We ran to the edge of the rock-shelf, leaped out from it into the fine dry sand, and rolled down in a magnificent slide till we came to an abrupt6 and rather bruising7 halt in the level ground beside the column. We mounted, to hurry our camels out to the grazing, and leaving them there ran over to the railway and shouted the others on.
This unmolested crossing was blessed, for Sharraf had warned us seriously against the enemy patrols of mule-riding infantry8 and camel corps9, reinforced from the entrenched10 posts by infantry on trolleys11 mounting machine-guns. Our riding-beasts we chased into the grass to feed for a few minutes, while the heavy camels marched over the valley, the line, and the farther flat, till sheltered in the sand and rock mouths of the country beyond the railway. Meanwhile the Ageyl amused us by fixing gun-cotton or gelatine charges about our crossing-place to as many of the rails as we had time to reach, and when our munching12 camels had been dragged away into safety on the far side of the line, we began, in proper order, to light the fuses, filling the hollow valley with the echoes of repeated bursts.
Auda had not before known dynamite13, and with a child’s first pleasure was moved to a rush of hasty poetry on its powerful glory. We cut three telegraph wires, and fastened the free ends to the saddles of six riding-camels of the Howeitat. The astonished team struggled far into the eastern valleys with the growing weight of twanging, tangling14 wire and the bursting poles dragging after them. At last they could no longer move. So we cut them loose and rode laughing after the caravan15.
For five miles we proceeded in the growing dusk, between ridges which seemed to run down like fingers from some knuckle16 in front of us. At last their rise and fall became too sharp to be crossed with safety by our weak animals in the dark, and we halted. The baggage and the bulk of our riders were still ahead of us, keeping the advantage they had gained while we played with the railway. In the night we could not find them, for the Turks were shouting hard and shooting at shadows from their stations on the line behind us; and we judged it prudent17 to keep quiet ourselves, not lighting18 fires nor sending up signals to attract attention.
However, ibn Dgheithir, in charge of the main body, had left a connecting file behind, and so before we had fallen asleep, two men came in to us, and reported that the rest were securely camped in the hidden fold of a steep sand-bank a little further on. We threw our saddle-bags again across our camels, and plodded19 after our guides in the murky20 dark (to-night was almost the last night of the moon) till we reached their hushed picket21 on the ridge1, and bedded ourselves down beside them without words.
In the morning Auda had us afoot before four, going uphill, till at last we climbed a ridge, and plunged22 over, down a sand slope. Into it our camels sank knee-deep, held upright despite themselves by its clinging. They were able to make forward only by casting themselves on and down its loose face, breaking their legs out of it by their bodies’ weight. At the bottom we found ourselves in the head-courses of a valley, which trended towards the railway. Another half-hour took us to the springing of this, and we breasted the low edge of the plateau which was the watershed23 between Hejaz and Sirhan. Ten yards more, and we were beyond the Red Sea slope of Arabia, fairly embarked24 upon the mystery of its central drainage.
Seemingly it was a plain, with an illimitable view downhill to the east, where one gentle level after another slowly modulated25 into a distance only to be called distance because it was a softer blue, and more hazy26. The rising sun flooded this falling plain with a perfect level of light, throwing up long shadows of almost imperceptible ridges, and the whole life and play of a complicated ground-system — but a transient one; for, as we looked at it, the shadows drew in towards the dawn, quivered a last moment behind their mother-banks, and went out as though at a common signal. Full morning had begun: the river of sunlight, sickeningly in the full-face of us moving creatures, poured impartially27 on every stone of the desert over which we had to go.
Auda struck out north-eastward28, aiming for a little saddle which joined the low ridge of Ugula to a lofty hill on the divide, to our left or north about three miles away. We crossed the saddle after four miles, and found beneath our feet little shallow runnels of water-courses in the ground. Auda pointed29 to them, saying that they ran to Nebk in Sirhan, and that we would follow their swelling30 bed northward31 and eastward to the Howeitat in their summer camp.
A little later we were marching over a low ridge of slivers32 of sandstone with the nature of slate33, sometimes quite small, but other times great slabs35 ten feet each way and, perhaps, four inches thick. Auda ranged up beside my camel, and pointing with his riding-stick told me to write down on my map the names and nature of the land. The valleys on our left were the Seyal Abu Arad, rising in Selhub, and fed by many successors from the great divide, as it prolonged itself northward to Jebel Rufeiya by Tebuk. The valleys on our right were the Siyul el Kelb, from Ugula, Agidat el Jemelein, Lebda and the other ridges which bent36 round us in a strung bow eastward and north-eastward carrying the great divide as it were in a foray out across the plain. These two water systems united fifty miles before us in Fejr, which was a tribe, its well, and the valley of its well. I cried Auda mercy of his names, swearing I was no writer-down of unspoiled countries, or pandar to geographical37 curiosity; and the old man, much pleased, began to tell me personal notes and news of the chiefs with us, and in front upon our line of march. His prudent talk whiled away the slow passage of abominable38 desolation.
The Fejr Bedouin, whose property it was, called our plain El Houl because it was desolate39; and to-day we rode in it without seeing signs of life; no tracks of gazelle, no lizards40, no burrowing41 of rats, not even any birds. We, ourselves, felt tiny in it, and our urgent progress across its immensity was a stillness or immobility of futile42 effort. The only sounds were the hollow echoes, like the shutting down of pavements over vaulted43 places, of rotten stone slab34 on stone slab when they tilted44 under our camels’ feet; and the low but piercing rustle45 of the sand, as it crept slowly westward46 before the hot wind along the worn sandstone, under the harder overhanging caps which gave each reef its eroded47, rind-like shape.
It was a breathless wind, with the furnace taste sometimes known in Egypt when a khamsin came; and, as the day went on and the sun rose in the sky it grew stronger, more filled with the dust of the Nefudh, the great sand desert of Northern Arabia, close by us over there, but invisible through the haze48. By noon it blew a half-gale, so dry that our shrivelled lips cracked open, and the skin of our faces chapped; while our eyelids49, gone granular, seemed to creep back and bare our shrinking eyes. The Arabs drew their head-clothes tightly across their noses, and pulled the brow-folds forward like vizors with only a narrow, loose-flapping slit50 of vision.
At this stifling51 price they kept their flesh unbroken, for they feared the sand particles which would wear open the chaps into a painful wound: but, for my own part, I always rather liked a khamsin, since its torment52 seemed to fight against mankind with ordered conscious malevolence53, and it was pleasant to outface it so directly, challenging its strength, and conquering its extremity54. There was pleasure also in the salt sweat-drops which ran singly down the long hair over my forehead, and dripped like ice-water on my cheek. At first, I played at catching55 them in my mouth; but, as we rode further into the desert and the hours passed, the wind became stronger, thicker in dust, more terrible in heat. All semblance56 of friendly contest passed. My camel’s pace became sufficient increase to the irritation57 of the choking waves, whose dryness broke my skin and made my throat so painful that for three days afterwards I could eat little of our stodgy58 bread. When evening at last came to us I was content that my burned face still felt the other and milder air of darkness.
We plodded on all the day (even without the wind forbidding us there could have been no more luxury-halts under the shadow of blankets, if we would arrive unbroken men with strong camels at el Fejr), and nothing made us widen an eye or think a thought till after three in the afternoon. Then, above two natural tumuli, we came to a cross-ridge swelling at last into a hill. Auda huskily spat59 extra names at me.
Beyond it a long slope, slow degrees of a washed gravel60 surface with stripings of an occasional torrent-bed, went down westward. Auda and I trotted61 ahead together for relief against the intolerable slowness of the caravan. This side the sunset glow a modest wall of hills barred our way to the north. Shortly afterwards the Seil abu Arad, turning east, swept along our front in a bed a fair mile wide; it was inches deep with scrub as dry as dead wood, which crackled and split with little spurts62 of dust when we began to gather it for a fire to show the others where we had made the halt. We gathered and gathered vigorously, till we had a great cock ready for lighting. Then we found that neither of us had a match.
The mass did not arrive for an hour or more, when the wind had altogether died away, and the evening, calm and black and full of stars, had come down on us. Auda set a watch through the night, for this district was in the line of raiding parties, and in the hours of darkness there were no friends in Arabia. We had covered about fifty miles this day; all we could at a stretch, and enough according to our programme. So we halted the night hours; partly because our camels were weak and ill, and grazing meant much to them, and partly because the Howeitat were not intimate with this country, and feared to lose their way if they should ride too boldly without seeing.
The End
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1
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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3
jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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circumspectly
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| adv.慎重地，留心地 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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bruising
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| adj.殊死的；十分激烈的v.擦伤(bruise的现在分词形式) | |
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infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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trolleys
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| n.（两轮或四轮的）手推车( trolley的名词复数 )；装有脚轮的小台车；电车 | |
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12
munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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13
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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14
tangling
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| （使）缠结， （使）乱作一团( tangle的现在分词 ) | |
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15
caravan
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| n.大蓬车；活动房屋 | |
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16
knuckle
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| n.指节；vi.开始努力工作；屈服，认输 | |
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prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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plodded
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| v.沉重缓慢地走（路）( plod的过去式和过去分词 )；努力从事；沉闷地苦干；缓慢进行（尤指艰难枯燥的工作） | |
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murky
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| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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21
picket
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| n.纠察队；警戒哨；v.设置纠察线；布置警卫 | |
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22
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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23
watershed
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| n.转折点，分水岭，分界线 | |
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24
embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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25
modulated
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| 已调整[制]的，被调的 | |
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hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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impartially
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| adv.公平地，无私地 | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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32
slivers
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| （切割或断裂下来的）薄长条，碎片( sliver的名词复数 ) | |
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33
slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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34
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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slabs
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| n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片 | |
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36
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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37
geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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38
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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39
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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40
lizards
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| n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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41
burrowing
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| v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的现在分词 )；翻寻 | |
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42
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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43
vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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44
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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45
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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46
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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47
eroded
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| adj. 被侵蚀的，有蚀痕的 动词erode的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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48
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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49
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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50
slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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51
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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52
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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53
malevolence
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| n.恶意，狠毒 | |
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54
extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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55
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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56
semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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57
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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58
stodgy
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| adj.易饱的；笨重的；滞涩的；古板的 | |
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59
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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60
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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61
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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62
spurts
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| 短暂而突然的活动或努力( spurt的名词复数 )； 突然奋起 | |
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