At Shetâteh I parted from Ḥussein, Muḥammad, and the camel riders. Kheiḍir was reported to be four hours away, a little to the south of the Kerbelâ road. The Ḳâimmaḳâm could supply me with two zaptiehs, and Fattûḥ had hired a couple of mules to carry our diminished packs. The four men intended to travel back together, making a long day from Raḥḥâlîyeh to Themail so as to avoid a night in the open desert. They started next morning in good heart, fortified by presents of quinine, a much-prized gift, and other more substantial rewards. Muḥammad would gladly have come with us to Kerbelâ, but we remembered the Benî Ḥassan and decided that it would be wiser for him to turn back, though before he left we had laid plans for a longer and a more adventurous journey to be undertaken another year, please God! We had not gone more than an hour from Shetâteh before we met a company of the Benî Ḥassan coming in to the oasis for dates, a troop of lean and ragged men driving donkeys. They asked us anxiously whether we had seen any of the Deleim at Shetâteh. “No, wallah!” said Fattûḥ with perfect assurance, and I laughed, knowing that Muḥammad was well on his way to Raḥḥâlîyeh. We had ridden to the south-east for about three hours, through a most uncompromising wilderness, when, in the glare ahead, we caught sight of a great mass which I took for a natural feature in the landscape. But as we approached, its shape became more and more definite, and I asked one of the zaptiehs what it was. “It is Kheiḍir,” said he. “Yallah, Fattûḥ, bring on the mules,” I shouted, and galloped forward. Of all the wonderful experiences that have fallen my way, the first sight of Kheiḍir is the most memorable. It reared its mighty walls out of the sand, almost untouched by time, breaking the long lines of the waste with its huge towers, steadfast and massive, as though it were, as I had at first thought it, the work of nature, not of man. We approached it from the north, on which side a long low building runs out towards the sandy depression of the Wâdî Lebai’ah (Fig. 77). A zaptieth caught me up as I reached the first of the vaulted rooms, and out of the northern gateway a man in long robes of white and black came trailing down towards us through the hot silence. “Peace be upon you,” said he. “And upon you peace, Sheikh ’Alî,” returned the zaptieh. “This lady is of the English.” “Welcome, my lady Khân,” said the sheikh; “be pleased to enter and to rest.” He led me through a short passage and under a tiny dome. I was aware of immense corridors opening on either hand, but we passed on into a great vaulted hall where the Arabs sat round the ashes of a fire. “My lady Khân,” said Sheikh ’Alî, “this is the castle of Nu’mân ibn Mundhir.”