The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [68]
The formal answer came in a ragged chorus. “Nishûfwish-shakfikheir—May you be fortunate at our next meeting.” I detected a certain lack of conviction in the voices, however, and a woman’s voice broke into soprano lamentation.
Emerson drowned her out with a sonorous rendition of an Arabic song, and urged his camel to a trot. Gritting my teeth—for the motion of a trotting camel is the most painful thing on this earth—I followed his lead. In a cloud of sand, accompanied by song, we thundered away.
As soon as we were out of sight of the others, Emerson allowed his camel to slow to a walk. I drew up beside him. “Are we going in the right direction, Emerson?”
“No.” Emerson glanced at the compass and turned his beast slightly to the right. “That was purely for effect, Peabody. A stirring departure, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, indeed, my dear, and it has had the desired effect.” One of the men had continued the song (“When will she say to me, ‘Young man, come and let us intoxicate ourselves?’ “) and the others were humming along.
The cool of morning gave way to warmth and then to excessive heat. We paused to rest during the hottest part of the day in the shade of a rock outcropping. Deserts vary as people do. The great sand sea of the Sahara, with its sterile golden dunes, was far to the north. Here the underlying skin of the planet was sandstone, not limestone, and the flat surface was broken by rocks and gullies that marked the course of ancient waterways. Late in the afternoon we set out again. Only when approaching darkness made travel impossible did we stop to make camp. We had seen no sign of anyone who might have preceded us, not even the bones of fallen men and camels that form grisly guideposts along such well-traveled routes as the Darb el Arba’in.
“We are off all the known caravan routes,” Emerson said, when I mentioned this later as we sat around the campfire. “The nearest part of the Darb el Arba’in is hundreds of miles west of here; there is no known route between it and this part of Nubia. Still, I had hoped to find some sign of Forthright’s passage—the dead ashes of a fire, discarded tins, or even the tracks of the camels.”
The stars blazed like gems in a sky as cold as airless space; a chill breeze ruffled my hair. We sat in reflective silence until the moon rose, casting strange shadows across the silvered sands.
The next day was a repetition of the first except that the terrain became even more arid and forbidding. In that waste any object would have stood out like a beacon; tracks, which Emerson identified as those of an antelope, were as plain as if they had been printed on the sand. But we saw no signs of man. That evening one of the camels showed signs of distress, so I gave it an extra dose of my cordial. In spite of this, it died during the night. I was not surprised; it had been the weakest of the lot. Leaving the poor creature lying where it had fallen, we pushed on.
By the afternoon of the third day the uncomfortable temperature changes, from unbearable heat by day to freezing cold by night, and our failure to find any traces of Reggie’s caravan, were beginning to tell on even the hardiest. Sifting sand had rubbed our skins raw; those unaccustomed to riding were stiff and sore. The men rode in sullen silence. An ugly haze veiling the sun did not lessen the heat, but awoke dire forebodings of sandstorm. I found myself falling into a kind of stupor as the camel plodded onward; it was hard to tell which ached more, my head or certain portions of my abused anatomy.
I was aroused from my semi-slumber by a shout. Dazed and dizzy, I echoed it in fainter tones. “What? What is it?”
Emerson was too elated to note my enfeebled state. “Look, Peabody. There they are! By heaven, the lunatic was right after all!”
At first the objects he indicated seemed only another mirage, quivering as if viewed through water. They took on solider dimensions as we urged our beasts to a faster gait, and before long we had reached them: a pair of tall, rocky columns, like