Then they loaded the camels. I sat by and watched, wondering what we could have forgotten. Saïd presently was struck with a bright idea, and before I could seize him had fled to buy a jar of ghee, or rancid butter, for our cooking on the road. Pursuit was hopeless, but at last I could wait no longer. Fortune favoured me, and I found him. He had, so far, forgotten all about the ghee, and was testing the smoking capabilities of a quantity of hubble-bubble pipes, one of which I purchased, and which I found to be a veritable passport on my journey. Then off he went to buy the ghee, the pipe under his arm; but I accompanied him, and brought him safely back again. With a sigh of delight I watched the camels laden with my baggage saunter off with slouching gait out of the yard and along the yellow dusty road, followed by the men. Half an hour later we drove out through the Main Pass gate of Aden, down the steep winding hill, and along the isthmus, to join our baggage-animals at the village of Sheikh Othman, on the mainland. It was almost sunset, and grand and beautiful the jagged outline of Aden looked as we left it behind. The bay, placid as glass, reflected the great rock, and the ships that lay so peacefully upon its motionless waters. The sky, a mass of primrose yellow, still trembled with the heat of the afternoon sun. Far away beyond the crowded masts of the native craft, Little Aden, rival of its sister rock, rose a pale mauve against the sky. Then the sun set, and our cab came to a standstill with a jerk that threatened to break it to atoms; while our Somali driver, good Moslem that he was, alighted to pray. The air was fresh and cool, and we descended for a few seconds to stretch our limbs. One could not help thinking of the strange mixture of the past and the present. This grand lithe figure rising and falling in prayer, now upright with outstretched hands, now prostrate with his forehead on the ground, seemed like some memory of the long dead glories of Islam, whereas he was in reality only a cab-driver. On again, on over the level plain where many an army has met and fought over the possession of the barren rock we were leaving behind us, until in the fading of the after-glow we drew up in the quiet square of Sheikh Othman. I was intensely happy. A feeling of exhilaration at the journey before me ran through my being—and we were really started! I could not let the Somali driver go back, so I paid him for his stabling for the night, and dragged him off to the little _café_ where my camels and men were resting; and here we, Arabs and Moor, Somali and Englishman, calling “Bismillah”[35] together, sat down to our humble repast of fowl and coffee.