A few minutes later a small circular table was produced and several dishes were brought in. These consisted of cucumber sliced up in milk, small wads of boiled flour in milk, yoghourt or curdled milk and chapatties--a feast such as we had hardly dared to hope for. Turkish fashion, we sat round, each armed with a wooden spoon and dipped in the same dish, emptying one after another. It is etiquette on such occasions to wait until the next man has taken a spoonful so that all may get the same number in the end, but I fear we were not always so scrupulous and ate as fast as our usual habits would allow. When the table and dishes had been cleared away, Ahmed was given a little English tobacco and told it was the best German variety. Soon after we bid him a grateful farewell, and, although he was unwilling to take anything, succeeded in getting him to accept some money. We felt that to accept his hospitality and humbug him without any payment would scarcely be playing the game. He directed us towards our road, for which we had to descend again to the main valley and cross the river. On the further side we were delayed by a large irrigation nullah. When across this we found a good many blackberries and some onions in a field. The latter we seized upon with avidity, as being the first we had met with. There was some doubt as to which of two roads we should take, but it was decided to pursue one which some women had pointed out as the right road to Duraghan. This led straight away from the river and began to climb steeply. After a couple of hours, we had ascended some distance and decided to bivouac till the afternoon. The sun was pretty hot, but we were now high up and on top of a small hill from which the surrounding ranges could be clearly seen. It was evident that we had not come in the direction we had intended, but, on the other hand, we were now heading direct for the sea. After some discussion and poring over the map, we decided that our only real chance of reaching the sea lay in making a bee-line across country as nearly as possible in a north-easterly direction, buying food where we could and walking by day. If we had gone on we should not only have had to skirt Duraghan by night, or make a big detour by day, but the distance down to the sea would have been very much greater. In addition, it would have been much hotter for walking, with the extra hardship of mosquitoes at night. CHAPTER X REACHING THE COAST