“I sat staring out over the dazzling sand, and then, despite the peculiar sensation, I suppose I really did sleep, for the next thing that happened was that I _saw_ a man in the desert, plodding through the sand. How far he was from me I could not say, but the impression was exactly the one you get looking at a fellow through a very high-power telescope. You can see him apparently only a few feet away, and yet you _know_--although you can make out the buttons on his coat and almost see the colour of his eyes--that he’s really quite a long way off. “You remember that Hun sniper you showed me through a signal telescope one day in France, Harry: seemed as if he was six feet away instead of nearly a hundred yards? Well, that was the impression. “This fellow was plodding drearily through the sand, dragging his feet as though dead beat. His face was grey and haggard, and his lips black and swollen, and his eyes all red. I didn’t see his clothes clearly at all, and have no recollection of what they were like, although, I remember the absolutely done-in appearance of his whole figure. “As I watched him staggering on, he fell, and lay still a minute. Then he pulled himself up on one arm--he gave me the impression, by the way, of having only one arm--and looked my way, and his lips seemed to be working. Then again I got that inexplicable sensation of some one trying to make me hear over great spaces. “I suppose I woke up then, for suddenly the man disappeared, and there was only the bare empty desert before me once more. But stronger than ever was the sensation of some one far off calling and calling in a silent voice. “Well, I sat there a bit, and sometimes the feeling was stronger and sometimes fainter, but always there, rather like when you’re listening to a distant sound across a valley, and sometimes the wind almost sweeps it away, and then suddenly there it is again clear and sharp. “Well, eventually I went back to camp. “I’m not a fanciful bloke, and I don’t believe in spooks or all this spiritualistic tosh, most of which is faked. But I am ready to admit that there are lots of things we don’t understand, things like telepathy and so on; and do what I could, I could not get rid of the feeling that some one was calling to me out in the desert. “Although I tried to put it down to the aftermath of a vivid dream, I could not rid myself of it; and further, something seemed to keep on reminding me that I hadn’t really been to sleep, and the reasonable part of me that insisted on the dream theory couldn’t say that I had either. “Eventually I decided that I would do something--for me--quite mad. I would push out a little into the desert. I had _chagals_[1] and things to take enough water for myself and a couple of men for four days, and the camels could do without any for that time. That meant about thirty miles out and back.