I shall never forget that last night in the desert,—Turks, Arabs, Moors, and Englishman squatting on carpets, sharing a common pipe in a dimly lit _café_ in the desert. Coffee and supper were cooking, and one could hear the bubbling of the coffee-husks in the earthen pot that was preparing for our men. And then they brought our supper, a couple of desert fowls that tasted as though they had tramped a century over the sand, so tough they were. A rest of an hour or two was all we were allowed, and long before daylight we were off again. The desert here takes the form of sand-dunes, in parts covered with scanty scrub, in parts bare yellow sand, broken only by the hideous lines of crooked telegraph-posts. There were no signs of a road, not even a track in the sand, for the slightest breeze destroys the marks left by those who have gone before. But our men knew the way well, and just a little after seven o’clock, when we were beginning to suffer severely from the intense rays of the sun, a cry proceeded from our foremost man, who stood spear in hand, a silhouette against the burning sky. Hodaidah! There it was at last, dancing in the shimmering heated air of the desert,—turned, and twisted, and indistinct, but Hodaidah nevertheless! As we neared the town the scene became quite picturesque. Here an old Turkish fort, half in ruins, stood out yellow from the white sand; there the remains of some aqueduct in which no water flowed. Then we entered palm-groves, whose greenness after the desert was refreshing, under the shade of which nestled the clean grass-and-mat huts and zarebas of the Arab and Indian inhabitants. Still on; past many a pretty country-house of the Arab merchants, surrounded by gardens, until at length we emerged into the great market-place that lies without the walls of the town proper, above which rise the houses snowy white, tier upon tier in strange disorder. Passing under a great gateway, the upper part of which served as barracks, we proceeded by narrow streets to our destination, a large _café_ kept by a Greek. Here I engaged a room, and sending my Arabs and Turkish guards to forage for themselves until I had rested, we carried our scanty baggage to an upper chamber, the windows of which looked out on one side to the sea, and on the other to the principal street I settled myself in. But the fatigue of my march from Sanaa had been too much for me, and in an hour my fever had returned, and I was lying, almost unconscious, tossing from side to side. Saïd and Abdurrahman likewise were attacked, and suffered as much perhaps as I did. But our journey was over, we had finished with the mountains and plains of the Yemen, and our goal was reached. CHAPTER XI. HODAIDAH.