Hour after hour we pursued our hopeless way in the blackness of the night, until somewhere about 8 p.m., when we reached the small stream. It was useless going any further, so we camped. We called for the tent to be pitched and firewood brought, but to our surprise met with no response. We could not understand it. We called again, but beyond Dirito and Viseli and their two henchmen with the animals, there were not more than three or four men with us, and they were carrying loads of cloth. The others were scattered somewhere in the darkness along the path by which we had come. We were in a nice predicament, our small party being perched on a bare, bleak hillside, exposed to the full fury of the icy blast without a tent, a blanket, or a thing to eat, though nothing had passed our lips since our hasty meal at daylight that morning. However, there was nothing to do but to make the best of it, so we ordered a large fire to be made, to try to mitigate in some degree the freezing horror of the icy gale. Another disappointment awaited us; there was absolutely no firewood to be had. Our few men searched diligently for an hour, and brought back two or three handfuls of brushwood, which by dint of a wasteful expenditure of matches, coupled with no small amount of profanity, were transformed into a puny apology for a fire. Presently, to our great joy, we heard shouts from the other side of the stream, and soon we had the satisfaction of beholding a small body of our porters approaching. We eagerly examined their loads, but alas! they consisted, of course, of brass and iron wire, and, by the irony of fate, one load of cooking and table utensils. El Hakim and I resigned ourselves to a night of discomfort, and crouched down over the miserable spark we dignified by the name of a fire. An hour later a solitary porter struggled into our midst, and, lo and behold, he carried the fly-sheet of the tent. We hastily uncorded it, and found the tent-pegs rolled up inside; these were at once sacrificed for firewood, and we soon had a moderate blaze going. Then Ramathani discovered some pieces of raw meat among the cooking utensils, the remains of a sheep we had killed two days before. We very soon had them out, and cutting them into chunks, toasted them in the frying-pan, which formed a nourishing though somewhat indiarubber-like meal. El Hakim then spread the canvas fly-sheet out on the ground, and we both crept under it and tried to forget our discomfort in sleep. The gale blew with great violence all night, blowing our protecting fly-sheet up at the corners, and sending an icy draught up our trouser-legs in a most disagreeable manner; so that, altogether, we were unfeignedly thankful when the first grey streaks that heralded the dawn appeared in the eastern heavens.