The Quest of Julian Day (47 page)

Many people have the idea that an oasis is no more than a group of a few dozen palm trees with a mud-hole in their centre, but while this is so in many instances, the Great Oasis runs for nearly two hundred miles from north to south and in one place it is over forty miles wide; so its belt of verdure stretches as far as from London to Ilfracombe or Liverpool to Norwich. There are many villages in it and two fair-sized towns, Beris in its centre and El Kharga near its northern extremity. The latter is even connected with the Nile Valley by a light railway, for the transport of the date crop which is the principal means of livelihood of the Oasis dwellers.

We came down outside the town of El Kharga although I had little hope that I should find the Belvilles there. Travel is very slow in the Sahara and such business as securing guides is subject to every sort of irritating delay, but even so I did not
think it could have taken six days for my friends to get their papers vetted by the local officials and to complete their other arrangements before proceeding further into the interior.

Enquiries elicited the information that the party had left El Kharga three mornings before and had taken the caravan-route for the Oasis of Dakhla.

An hour later we were in the air again and passing over another dreary stretch of sand, but by midday we had reached the outskirts of the Dakhla Oasis which, although smaller than the Great Oasis, is still nearly as large as the county of Dorset.

Coming down at the town of Mut, near its centre, we made fresh enquiries and learnt that the Belvilles had left there the previous morning. We then flew on a further twenty miles to the little town of Qasr Dakhla which is on the northern edge of the Oasis only to find that they had moved on from there at dawn.

Caravan-routes leave Qasr for the north going to the Great Oasis of Farafra, or north-east to the Nile; but to its south, west and north-west there lies absolutely nothing but the
Grande Mer de Sable
, or Sea of Sand, which stretches in those directions unbroken by any habitable land or even occasional water-holes for over four hundred miles. For travellers advancing from the east, therefore, Dakhla is to all intents and purposes the end of the world.

Far away to the north-west across the sand sea there lies the Oasis of Siwa which in the old days was known as that of Jupiter Amon and was the rich goal of Cambyses' legions; but through the centuries the rare expeditions which have reached it have always done so
via
a chain of oases far to the north or by coming down from the Mediterranean coast. The direct route, which necessitates a journey longer than that from London to Edinburgh through a completely trackless and waterless desert, has never been attempted since Cambyses' day.

Knowing that the Belvilles could not now be far ahead of me I persuaded the Egyptian pilot to fly me out in search of them: and we set off again, now penetrating the fringe of the great no-man's-land of Africa. I had hoped that it would be quite an easy matter to pick them up from the air until I realised that they would be certain to halt during the midday heat and that
it is very difficult indeed to identify any object which is not moving in the sort of broken ground that lay below us.

For over an hour we circled back and forth, flying low over each long, waterless
wadi
as we came to it in the hope of spotting their camp. At last we located it in a narrow defile where the rocks on one side gave a little shade from the burning sun.

My pilot landed me on a flat stretch of sand about two miles away and helped me unload my baggage. Some of Harry's people had seen the 'plane land and I saw through my binoculars that he and Amin were coming out to investigate. As the pilot was anxious to get away I said good-bye to him, watched him take off and then set out to meet my friends. As soon as the distance had decreased sufficiently for them to recognise me in my strange clothes they both began to wave and shout excitedly; and their surprise at my having suddenly dropped on them out of the blue can be imagined.

Reserving my full story for a more appropriate time, I just said that I had been unavoidably detained, and Amin went back to get porters to fetch my baggage. I then told Harry that Oonas had set a pretty little trap for me out of which I had only just managed to wriggle and that I would give him all the details later.

Clarissa was unfeignedly glad to see me when we reached the camp, but Sylvia commented sarcastically upon my washed-out appearance and said I looked as though I had been having a few nights out with a vampire.

I didn't disillusion her for the moment but inquired how things were going with the expedition. One of the porters had chucked his hand in at Kharga having, apparently, only started out from Luxor with the idea of getting a free trip to the Oasis because he wished to visit his family who lived there; and another, having inadvertently trodden on a cobra, had departed from this vale of tears in a distinctly unpleasant manner; but Sylvia had succeeded in getting two good men to replace them and two guides for whom the local Sheik had vouched.

The four lorries and two cars, all of which had enormous balloon tyres, these now having been found more satisfactory for desert travel than caterpillar tractors, had put up a good performance although they were pretty heavily laden. Their loads, however, would automatically decrease as we advanced.

The worst trouble my friends had met with, apart from the grim business of endeavouring to soothe the last moments of the poor fellow who had died from snake-bite, was having been badly bitten themselves by insects. The oases swarm with mosquitoes and, although the nets keep most of these at bay during the night, the sandflies which are almost as great a pest so infinitesimal that they will penetrate even the finest netting. Harry had been singled out for particularly virulent attacks, probably on account of the rich alcoholic content of his bloodstream, and he declared he had not had a single hour's sleep since he left Luxor owing to the infuriating droning of the little devils; but now that we were entering the sterile desert it was to be hoped that we should get free of them. I was given a belated lunch and at about four o'clock the caravan set off again.

Progress was slow as there was no question of our going straight ahead on a compass course; every mile covered meant a scouting expedition either on foot or in one of the cars to survey the lie of the land ahead and decide which way to bring up the convoy. Sometimes long détours had to be made to avoid the low ranges of hills, and at others one of the vehicles would get stuck in a patch of soft, treacherous sand. When that happened we had to unroll forty-foot strips of canvas into which wooden battens were sewn, in front of the two fore-wheels of the vehicle to give them something to grip on, and hitch it on to one of the others with a tow-rope to give it a start; in the worst cases, when a lorry was badly stuck, we had to get our shovels and dig it out.

There is a special technique for driving through desert country and our drivers had been picked for their previous experience so they did not get stuck very often. The idea is to follow the course of each
wadi
, zigzagging from one to another, roughly in the direction in which you wish to go; but in the
wadi
bottoms lie lovely, smooth stretches of yellow sand which are highly deceptive; these must be avoided like the plague so one has to drive along their edges where the hard ground slopes up to the ridge on one of the
wadi's
sides. This means that the car is nearly always running along at an angle of about forty-five degrees and one is in constant fear that it may turn over. Added to this, there being not the slightest suggestion
of a track, one bumps and jolts violently the whole time one is moving; so it is difficult to imagine a more thoroughly uncomfortable and exhausting mode of travel.

We pitched camp at sundown. The others had already experienced several days' desert journeying in their trip from Luxor to Kharga and Kharga to Dakhla; but even this single afternoon's run was enough to show me that the expedition in which I had involved myself was very far from being a picnic.

By a rough reckoning we were satisfied that although the actual mileage of the convoy was much greater, it had accomplished about thirty miles along its compass course northwestward since the morning. We could have got considerably further if we had been using camels, as the caravan could then have followed an almost direct route up hill and down dale; but, on the other hand, we should have required a great number of animals to carry all our stores, which would have meant more men, and both camels and men would have required more water; which, in turn, would have meant yet more camels and yet more men; and that, of course, is the reason why the Arabs have never attempted to cross the
Grande Mer de Sable
.

Our cars and lorries were considerably slower but they afforded the only possible means of making a prolonged desert journey in which fresh supplies of water could not be obtained. Actually we were not displeased with the thirty-mile stage we had accomplished, since, if we could keep up that average, we reckoned that we ought to be able to reach our destination in about ten days.

We were now in hostile, or at least lawless, territory as bands of Bedouin, who are fanatical Christian-haters and responsible to no man, roam the fringe of the desert. We posted sentries to keep a look-out for such unwelcome visitors and the rest of the men settled down to their meal of dry bread and dates washed down by great quantities of incredibly strong black tea; while our cook, Abdulla, prepared us a simple but good evening meal.

After it was over I told my friends how extraordinarily lucky I was to be with them, and the full story of the grim happenings which had prevented my setting out with the expedition from Luxor as I had originally intended. Just as I
had guessed, Oonas had sent a telegram signed with my name, saying I had changed my mind at the last minute and decided to return to Cairo with her. She had even had the forethought to include a line in it saying it was my wish that Amin should accompany the Belvilles, to make quite certain of getting him out of the way as well.

Sylvia was considerably chastened when she had heard the true reason why I was looking so washed-out and ill; and she said that it would give her considerable pleasure to convert Oonas into a brazen image by sticking into her 3,600 drawing-pins, being roughly one per minute for the time I had spent imprisoned in the tomb.

It had been grilling hot when I had joined the party that afternoon, and all through our trek most of us had been perspiring as we stumbled up the low hills to seek a way for the convoy, or bumped and bumped, and bumped on the seats of the cars; but with the coming of night the temperature had fallen with extraordinary rapidity. In that barren waste there was no wood to make a camp-fire; our cooking was done on crude-oil stoves and these had to be put out immediately it was finished in order to economise fuel; so, although we all had heavy coats to wear in the evenings, we shivered where we sat on the floor of the bell-tent we were using as a mess-house. It was the cold that broke the party up, soon after I had finished recounting my adventures, as we were all longing to crawl into our warm flea-bags.

In the great stillness which enwrapped us I felt very far away from the turmoil of the modern world. O'Kieff and his minions seemed infinitely far removed from this blessed peace of the barren lands which have remained unaltered by man since time began. As we had foiled him in his attempt to secure the lower half of the tablet we had no cause to fear his sending out a rival expedition and, as I had kept a most careful watch from the 'plane earlier in the day, I was quite certain that he was not sitting on our tail, expecting us to guide him to the treasure, as I had thought he might. I thought a little about the treasure and our chances of finding it, which I felt were small; a little about Sylvia, and a lot about Oonas; then I fell asleep.

Amin woke us at five next morning. The two servants, Omar and Mussa, brought us tea and fruit, after which I gave the order to strike camp. That fell within my province owing to an arrangement which we had made when I had joined the party the day before.

There were no passengers in our convoy and Harry, Clarissa, Sylvia, Amin and myself had more or less agreed upon the duties we would each undertake when we had first discussed the expedition in Cairo. My failure to set out with them had upset things rather so Amin had had to take on most of the jobs that should have been mine between Luxor and Dakhla but now we were able to readjust matters.

Before he had married, Harry had been a motor-salesman and although he had not proved by any means a spectacular success at selling cars, there was very little that he didn't know about their insides; so he was transport chief and had the drivers immediately under him.

Clarissa was in charge of our stores. She issued the rations at each halt, gave Abdulla and the other servants their orders, looked after our feeding arrangements and provided us with such minor comforts as were possible.

Sylvia's province was that of navigation officer; she took the altitude of the sun each day at midday with her sextant, worked out our position from her books of logarithms and gave us our compass course for our next trek forward. She spoke Arabic much better than I did and the guides came under her, advising on which course the convoy should advance as it moved from one grim, sun-scorched valley to another.

I was camp-master, a job that Amin had been doing before my arrival and in which he still assisted me to some extent although he now had time to help with other work as well. It
was my job to select the places where we should halt during the midday rest and for the night, superintend the loading and unloading of the baggage and, while we were on the march, to supervise the porter's operations whenever any of the vehicles got stuck.

All five of us naturally helped each other out whenever possible and, as neither Clarissa nor Harry could speak any Arabic, Amin spent a good part of his time with one or other of them making known their wishes to the drivers or servants when the Arabs' small stock of English proved insufficient.