and bizarre was added by the two glistening black waterskins which each man carried lashed to his saddle, for their trip was to take them across waterless country; these, with the legs sticking out in strange unnatural attitudes, looked horribly alive as the water moved about inside them. The narrow strip of cultivation along the river was soon left behind, and the horsemen neared the jazirah, crossing now tracts of land crisp with salt and absolutely barren, now patches thick with the greygreen scrub of the desert, its many varieties indistinguishable to the uninitiated, but familiar to the Arab as buttercups and daisies to the Englishman: tahama and righul, favourite fodder of the camel; ishshar, with its medicinal juices; arta, which provides aromatic firewood; donguh, the seed-pods of which are used as food by the desert-dwellers; shanan, with its saponaceous properties; and here and there scanty patches of dubaij and haytam, to which the shepherd leads his white and brown flocks. At times the party seemed to be riding towards a wide stretch of water-a familiar and home-like sight to the marshmen; but it always receded as they approached, and sometimes disappeared altogether from sight; for in Iraq, mirage is not the traveller's fevered dream of palm-trees shading a bubbling spring, but simply the illusion of a vast expanse of shallow water, in which distant caravans appear to be wading kneedeep. As the day wore on, Mackintosh realised that his ill-assorted band could not reach Saiyid Nur, where he had hoped to spend the night, by sunset. Those of the Levies who could ride were feeling the strain of the unaccustomed exercise, while the plight of those who had merely said they could ride was a pitiable one. Не therefore called a halt, and the party bivouacked in the open. The water-skins were collected and put under the charge of the guard, for the men, used as they were to the plenty of the marsh country, had not learned the desert Arab's lesson of husbanding their supplies. To his surprise, Rand learned as they set out next morning that the Adviser proposed to halt for the rest of the day after reaching Saiyid Nur. His Levies, he protested, might have been dead-tired the evening before, but a night's rest had made them fit for a much longer journey than the few miles proposed by Mackintosh. "I am not doubting your men's endurance," said the latter; "I am thinking of the country ahead of us. Abu Saba', the place we are making for, is a sort of oasis in a great tract of sand-dunes, a fair-sized depression of good fertile soil, in which crops can be grown because they get the benefit of drainage - water to eke out the scanty rainfall. It is cut in half by a slightly raised stretch of open country, and the western part, known as Nisf al Gharbi, is the land which has been ploughed and sown by Zambur's people. The place is rather a favourite one with Arabs. There are seven wells, which give it its name; the grazing is excellent in spring, and no Government mamur ever worries them to collect the 'ushr on the crops they grow. Abu Saba' has often been a bone of contention, I believe; but certainly Ajil has a better right to it than any one else, though he has by no means held it in unbroken possession. But even the Arabs admit that it is practically impossible in summer to cross the hot waterless sand - desert which surrounds the place, except by night. That is why we are going to spend the day at Saiyid Nur." While Mackintosh was speaking, the two men saw ahead of them, shimmering in the heat haze, a shadowy dome, many times larger than that of the Haidar Khan mosque at Baghdad. More and more distinct it grew, then suddenly vanished, to appear again a few minutes later in its true perspective, a small round dome barely discernible. This was the tomb of Saiyid Nur, a building of sun-baked bricks standing on ground slightly raised above the level of the surrounding desert. It was guarded and kept in repair by the Saiyid's descendants, who drew a not inconsiderable in come from the fees paid by tribesmen for the privilege of burying their dead in the proximity of so holy a descendant of the Prophet. It was a dismal spot, with its hundreds of low earthen mounds marking the graves, but Rand's men did not seem at all affected. Some set off to collect fodder for the horses, others busied themselves with filling the water-skins at the adjacent wells, which were no more than shallow holes in the ground. Near by stood some low troughs made of mud coated with a kind of gypsum brought from the hills, and half-full of green foul-looking water: the object of these was explained when one of the Arabs, seeing the marshmen trying vainly to induce their horses to eat the freshlycut filiwi grass, told them to take it to the wells and wash it in the troughs provided in readiness. The grass had become so impregnated with salt from the ground on which it had grown that the animals, hungry though they were, would not touch it until it had been rinsed in water. The long hot day passed without incident, and at sunset the party set out on the last stage of its journey. The going was slow, hindered sometimes by deep shifting sand, and sometimes by stretches of ground pitted by the jerboa rat with holes so numerous that even the nimble-footed Arab pony frequently came to grief. Though night was falling, the heat was almost unbearable, the seven wells were probably and to add to the discomfort of great antiquity, for their of Arabs and Englishmen alike, sides were built up of careful a dry gusty wind would every masonry-not the kind of work now and again pick up the produced by Arabs for many sand and hurl it in their faces, centuries past. every particle pricking like a red-hot needle. Before they had gone half-way, Mackintosh had acquitted the Albu Obaid of all hyperbole in their saying that a horse which crossed by day would have its hoofs burned off, while a man would reach the other side with empty sockets, his eyes having melted away with the heat. At length, shortly after dawn, Shaikh Ajil's camp was reached. Willing hands took the horses to water, and soon the party was seated in the shade of the great madhif of goat's hair to await the meal which, according to Ajil, was on the point of being ready. Mackintosh, however, had had considerable experience of this degree of readiness; and having caught sight of the sheep being dragged towards the women's quarters, there to be slaughtered and cooked, he suggested to Rand that they should stretch their legs before the sun became too hot. They strolled accordingly in the direction of the famous wells, which were situated, strangely enough, just outside the cultivated land, in the first fringe of sand-dunes. Unlike those of Saiyid Nur, the wells lay at the bottom of wide sandy craters, where a few clumps of stunted reeds indicated the presence of water; closer inspection revealed the fact that Returning to the madhif, the two men had not long to wait before ten tribesmen staggered in bearing an enormous tray, of the kind known as "father of handles," as when loaded it could only be carried by means of ropes passed through the handles with which it was provided. It was heaped high with a mighty mound of rice, on the top of which glistened white a score of broad fat tails-those of the sheep which Ajil had slain in honour of his guests. Great dishes of mutton followed, and the sheep's heads were borne in on a separate dish and set before Mackintosh and Rand, who hardly appreciated, in the charger full of grinning masks, the compliment implied. Their meal finished, and washed down with bowls of sheep's milk, they made way for the Levies; but even the hearty appetites of Rand's men did not make any appreciable inroads on the vast quantity of food provided, and a plentiful meal still remained for the crowd of hungry-looking Arabs gathered round the outskirts of the madhif. All traces of the feast were speedily cleared away, and the men lay down in the comparative coolness of the madhif to make up for the sleep which they had lost the previous night, while Mackintosh and Rand were led by Shaikh Ajil to a smaller tent in which to get some rest. In the middle of the morning, Mackintosh was suddenly awakened by the sound of shouts, which speedily rose to an excited clamour of voices. Flinging on some clothes, he and Rand hastened outside, to find the whole camp apparently in the grip of panic. Rand went across at once to his men, who were looking on uneasily at the general confusion, while Mackintosh went in search of Ajil. He found the old shaikh busily loosening with his own. hands the guy - ropes of his tent. "Dogs of dogs, accursed of the accursed! he cried. They are upon us, Hakim. Zambur, with his men and Mohammad's, is even now on his way to raid my camp." He broke off to shout a string of orders to some of his men, who were hastily driving up the cows, donkeys, and camels which were to bear away the shaikh's property. Remonstrance was useless. Ajil's one thought, and the one thought of his tribesmen, was to get their worldly goods away to a place of safety before the descent of the raiders. Nothing else could be considered, no plan of resistance made, until this had been done. The first fever of panic died down, but the men and women still worked swiftly; the poorer members of the tribe, those who had few goods to load, were already leaving, while the shaikh cursed the slowness of the men in dismantling the heavy madhif. 66 What on earth is all the shindy about, sir.?" asked Rand, coming up. "Ajil has had a messenger, while we were asleep, to warn him that Zambur has set out, with his own gom and Shaikh Mohammad's, to attack the camp and collect the grain sown by his people. Result, immediate stampede. I must say it seems to me most unlikely that Zambur will cross the sand-dunes by dayfound it bad enough at night. But of course he may, so post some of your men to look out for any signs of them, and keep the rest handy here. I'll go and have a last word with Ajil." we 66 'No. were ? Did you think we thing either side wants. It's then?" Rand exclaimed, both not considered the thing to surprised and pleased. kill any one on these expeditions: raid and loot, then a counter-raid to try to loot a little more than the other fellows took-that's their idea of warfare. Well, anyhow, we'll see what we can do to give Zambur a welcome when he arrives." "We are not going back, Mackintosh. 'Not exactly, sir. But I thought this discretion - thebetter-part-of-valour talk was perhaps meant to indicate that we also should make a strategical retreat." "Not a bit of it," laughed As Mackintosh had foreseen, it was not until dawn that Zambur's men broke from the sand-dunes and charged across the open country towards the site of Ajil's camp. The fact that it was no longer there did not seem to dismay them. A few of the more cautious rode ahead, and posted themselves on the higher ground beyond, where they could keep a lookout for danger; the rest made hosa, riding round and round in circles, firing their rifles in the air, and shouting in unison a chant of victory. To all intents and purposes they had good reason for rejoicing. Shaikh Ajil and his tribe had fled, the crops lay before them waiting to be reaped. They could not see Rand's party of Levies, sent off by the Adviser by night to lie hidden a few miles away, nor Mackintosh himself, who, with an orderly, was watching them from the shelter of a clump of ithil bushes. Before many minutes had passed, the III. first ebullition of triumph died down, and then came the shout of mingled dismay and exasperation for which Mackintosh was waiting. Zambur's tribesmen, going to the wells for water, had found them all filled up with sand. The device was no new one among Arabs; it was familiar to the tribes as a sort of Parthian shot, or as a means of delaying pursuit for a few hours. The raiders seemed to accept the situation as a matter of course, and began methodically to clear away the sand, scooping it out with their hands in the absence of spades. Some stripped bare, not because of the increasing heat of the day, but in order to heap the sand in their disdashas to carry it away; for being on a raiding expedition, very few were wearing the ever-useful aba. The party of horsemen which had been despatched on the chance of overtaking Ajil's people soon returned unsuccessful, and before long the watchers began |