Maiden Voyages (35 page)

I recalled my early fears when the uncanny loneliness of the night made me shudder as I realised the utter isolation of our solitary way. We had embarked on an enterprise of which our most experienced Chinese friends spoke only in terms of warning; the natural shrinking from such loneliness, however, soon became a thing of the past, and those particular fears ceased for ever directly I realised that they were but the mock armaments of a foe with no power really to hurt, but who, a master in the region of fear, tries to dominate through frightening suggestions.

If, as those soldier-boys at Kiayükwan had so confidently declared,
the Gobi is the haunt of demons, then the night should have been the time when their presence was most real, yet in fact it was more by day than by night that the word
kwei
(demon) was on the driver’s lips, and most often it was the desert dust-spout which provoked it. However breezeless the day, somewhere on the horizon a slender spiral of sand would rise, move, circle, walk across the plain, leave the earth and vanish in the sky. Sometimes the whole desert floor was alive with them. At a distance they seemed insignificant, but close at hand they were fearful in their cyclonic force. Travellers call them dust-spouts from their likeness to an ocean water-spout, but the desert dweller, certain that these waterless places are peopled by
kwei
, calls them dust-demons. The pillar of sand gives the impression of an invisible being daintily folding a garment of dust round its unseen form. Some whirl from left to right, and some from right to left. “This one is the male and that one the female
kwei
,” said the men; “you can distinguish them by the way they fold the dust cloak around them, right to left or left to right; see how they come in pairs.”

The couple came gliding across the plain in our direction, then suddenly turned aside, passing quite close, yet enveloped in such a narrow whirlwind that the curtains of the cart scarcely moved, though we saw sand and stones lifted high from the ground. A laden camel can scarcely resist the full force of a dust-spout, and when I was caught in the fringe of one, it nearly swept me off my feet.

The scientific mind of the Westerner studies the phenomenon with a view to understanding the atmospheric conditions which cause it, but the oasis man who lives and dies among desert scenes believes that waterless places are peopled by spirits who desire to be reclothed with flesh. “The best for the demon,” they say, “is when a living human will let himself be possessed, but, failing this, the
kwei
uses the dust from which flesh is made as cover for its nakedness.”

The spirit which agitates the long night hours uses fear as its weapon, but the demon of noon is the demon of discouragement. When the chill of night is dispelled by the sun’s rays the heat quickly grows in intensity until the midday hour brings unutterable weariness to every member of the caravan. The landscape itself seems to take on a metallic and inimical aspect, and every hill and boulder is rimmed with a yellow
aura which gives a hard and repellent outline to the unfriendly scene. The expectant joyousness of the morning start has faded away, pleasant anticipation of the journey’s end is still too far ahead to be any consolation, and although half the stage is accomplished yet there is as much still to cover as lies behind, so the half-way line brings no sense of exhilaration. This is the moment when the noonday demon has power to transmute physical exhaustion into such weariness of spirit as drains all joy from service, leaving only stern duty to issue orders. Inertia invades beasts as well as men, and it is useless to urge flagging powers to greater effort. This, however, is no new difficulty to the caravan
bash
, and experience has taught him how to meet it. A halt must be called and a pause allowed in which to release tension and recover poise. In the desert there can be no rest without escape from the direct rays of the sun, the glare and the scorching heat, therefore some shade must be secured. The shadow of a rock is best, but where there is no rock there may be a man-built landmark made of desert clay, which throws reliable shade. Sometimes there was only the plain and its uncompromising nakedness, then the desert guide taught me how to use the shadow of my own cart and seek refuge between its high wheels. A brief period of rest for man and beast sent the caravan on its way renewed in strength and courage. The noonday demon had been overcome by recognising the noontide right to relax.

The still days when dust-demons walk abroad are good for caravans on the march, but sooner or later the time comes when the camels, alert as a barometer to atmospheric changes, show signs of uneasiness and become restive. The driver knows the indications and scans the horizon for signs of the coming storm, then moves among his animals, tightening ropes and securing packs. Before long there is a distant roar, and a cloud like rolling smoke with a livid edge advances and invades the sky, blotting out sun and daylight; then suddenly the sand-storm breaks on the caravan. No progress is possible and human beings shelter behind a barrage of kneeling camels from the flying stones and choking sand. When such a blinding storm is in progress there is no indication by which to find the way, and the only safe course is to stay still until it has exhausted itself by the surcharge of its own violence. It is a stirring of earth’s surface which blots out the light of day, robs the atmosphere
of its purity, blurs the outline of tracks and landmarks and takes all sense of direction from men, making them helpless to use even their natural powers of orientation. It cannot be overcome by resistance, and those who dissipate energy in fighting it will inevitably be exhausted by its fury. The camel-driver is too wise to waste strength in fight and, following the instinct of the camel that kneels in order to offer less resistance, he learns to shelter till the terrible blast passes over. Such a storm will not last many hours, and as soon as it has spent itself the sun reappears in a serene sky, the violently disturbed sand and stones sink to their own place, and the caravan can continue its journey.

Had I been without an experienced guide I should certainly have been deceived when I first heard that strange illusory voice calling for help, of which so many travellers have spoken.

“Halt,” I said, “there is someone calling!”

“There is no one calling,” said the
bash
, “and there is no reason to halt.”

“Cannot you hear?” I persisted. “Someone is calling from among the dunes.”

“Never listen to those voices,” he replied. “It is not a man’s cry, and those who follow it may never come back to the caravan. We must push on.” He urged the beasts forward and refused to listen. As he trudged ahead he spoke again: “Those voices are heard all over Gobi, but are worse in the Desert of Lob. One night when I was travelling there I got separated from my caravan. I heard a shout and the sound of camel-bells which I tried to overtake for hours. Then the moon rose and I saw there were no recent tracks of camels, so I halted, and turned back, but something held me and the voice still called. At last, with a great effort I retraced my steps to where I could see the tracks of our camels leading off in another direction. It was a strange experience, but as soon as I was on the right road those devilish voices ceased, and by midday I caught up with the caravan once more. They nearly had me that time, as they have had many others.”

“What then,” I asked, “are those strange voices which I heard?”

“The people of Lob call them
Azghun
,” he replied, “and say that it is a
kwei
which lives among the sand-hillocks and sometimes takes the
form of a black eagle. If travellers listen, it leads them away to waterless places where they perish.”

Dust-demons, phantom voices with their insistence, always trying to turn travellers out of the way—it sounded so fantastic that at first I was inclined to dismiss it all with an incredulous smile, but something in the subconscious arrested me, and I repeated aloud those words: “When an evil spirit has left a man it roams about in the desert, seeking rest.” I had to acknowledge that they were spoken by the only One Who really knows, so I thought on those words and kept silence.

It seemed as though the pastime of those demons was to make sport of the few lonely human beings who ventured into the desert, by encircling them with every manner of deception.

By night, lights which were like flames from a camp-fire played on the horizon, but no one has ever located them or come any nearer by following them. Watching my two companions walking ahead of the caravan one day, I was amazed to see four people where I had believed there were only two. My eyes saw something which my reason refused to accept. I overtook them and there were but two: I dropped back, and again there were four. Thus do the refractions of desert light shake confidence in the powers of discernment and call for a new standard of discrimination in which things seen with mortal eye are not to be relied upon, whereas the things which are relied on may be contrary to the evidence of the senses.

Mirage is the desert traveller’s constant companion and his perpetual torment. As soon as the sun is high above the horizon, the sand begins to glitter like water and appears to move like wavelets, while the clumps of camel-thorn look like tall bushes or stunted trees, and seem to be set by the edge of a lake. All through the day this illusion persists, and not until near sunset does the mirage vanish, the sand cease to glitter, and the landscape show itself for what it really is, a dull grey surface. Even the old traveller must never reckon himself free from the snare of illusion. On one occasion we were to spend a night in a Qazaq tent, but it was autumn, and the coarse desert-grass grew rank and hid the encampment. In the late afternoon the carter gave the cry:
“Dao-liao!”
(We have arrived), and, sure enough, there were the tents, the herds
and the pasturing flocks. A man hurried on to prospect, and we urged our tired beasts to further effort. In an hour’s time the tents, herds and pastures, though still there, were no nearer, and when darkness fell the voice of our man was heard shouting: “We are lost! I cannot find any
yurts
. We must stay here till morning.” In the straight clear light of dawn we saw the plain in its true aspect; there were no tents, no cattle and no water in sight. Not till the following sunset did we reach the encampment.

How terrible if in this realm of illusion where that which seemed real was not true, and where true things appeared false, I were left to find my way without a guide. Never could I hope to disentangle the web of deception, and free both mind and sense from its impalpable net. In the desert I learnt to detect some of the illusions which constantly surround me on the greater journey of life, and to depend for direction on the wisdom of Him Who is my unerring guide.

Without water the desert is nothing but a grave, and is useless either as a dwelling-place or even as a high-road for the living. If the traveller’s food is poor he will go hungry, if his road is long he will be weary, if his lot is hard he will be lonely, but to all these things he can become inured. No one, however, can be inured to thirst. When the craving for water assails a man he will forget all else in his frantic search for it, knowing that life itself depends on finding it, and that failing it he will soon be the victim of delirium, madness and death.

When a traveller first starts out to cross the desert he is inclined to take water for granted, and though the old innkeepers warn everyone to carry it, he may refuse to listen and prefer taking a risk to being burdened with a water-bottle, but once that man has experienced the torture of thirst his outlook is changed, and nothing will induce him to start upon any stage without a supply.

As the long hours pass, the burning sun seems to sap the moisture through every pore of the skin, until thirst is not only felt in the dry throat and cracked lips, but throughout the body, and as the days of rationed water go by, the whole system, tormented by a craving which becomes more and more urgent, calls out for the sight, the smell and the feeling of moisture. Sometimes the sunset hour brings a caravan to
a lonely spot where a water-hole should be found but is hard to detect. All members of the caravan dismount and hunt for the small depression, perhaps marked only by a stone. It is so easy to miss, and once darkness has fallen it would be impossible to locate it. Then a shout is heard, “Water, water!” and all run to the spot to quench their desperate thirst.

The mirage has been a decoy to many thirsty men. I myself, when I first saw a lovely lake with trees standing on its farther bank in mid-Gobi, urged the drivers to push on and reach it quickly, but the
bash
only smiled and spoke indulgently, as one might speak to an ignorant child: “That’s not water,” he said, “that’s glitter sand—dry water.” That lake was but a mirage, and the farther we went the farther it receded, tantalising our thirst with its falsity.

I was caught by another deception to which weary wayfarers are subject, and this time it was not “glitter sand” but the brackish water of the salt desert. The sparkle of the limpid spring was irresistible, but when I ran toward it, certain this time of the water’s reality, the same gruff voice cautioned me: “Drink as little of that water as you can,” it said. This time I cared for none of his warnings, for I had found real water and would enjoy it to the full. I soon learnt that the
bash
knew better than I, for the more I took of this water, the more parched I became. It was brackish—neither salt nor sweet. Not salt as sea water which drives to madness, nor sweet like spring-water which heals and refreshes, but brackish, leaving thirst for ever unquenched. I drank my fill, and came again, but I was thirsty still.

This experience made me wary of all desert waters, and when I came to the oasis of Ever-Flowing-Stream, though the water looked so tempting and so cool in the little grotto under the shady trees, I was shy of it, for other water had looked cool and tempting too. I tasted it cautiously, but here there was no deception and it was a stream of sweet, satisfying quality. This was
karez
water and came direct from the eternal snows of the distant mountains. Through a deep underground channel it had crossed the torrid plain, and when it emerged at the place where I stood it was as sweet, as cool and as pure as when it left the foot of the glacier, nor would the stream run dry so long as the snow-clad hills remained and the channel was kept unchoked.