Despite anxiety about the future, the weakening camels, our limited water-supply, and the possibility of not finding a way up--a possibility we did not like to reflect on overmuch, since it spelt something not unlike a two to one chance of dying in the sand trying to get back, we were, thanks to Aryenis, a comparatively cheerful little party, especially in the evenings. We had picked up a certain amount of fuel by the stream banks outside the gate where there were some small trees and a good quantity of thick reeds, and after the evening meal each night Firoz brought us over the remains of his cooking fire and a handful or two of fuel, and we sat round it under the starlit sky. Aryenis, with the firelight playing on her face, my old tie making a splash of colour in the big black collar of her _poshtin_, the skirts of which mostly concealed the offending blot of the flannel trousers, curled up on the rugs we spread for her; the rest of us sitting round smoking, while we answered her endless questions about our country, or Forsyth strummed to us on his tiny banjoline, and gave us _revue_ selections in his pleasing baritone, and then Aryenis in a real clear soprano sang us haunting snatches--music like old, old Western chant. And in the background the dim forms of the camels, the silhouette of the little tent, and the low murmur of the men’s talk round their bubbling hookah. We might be going to leave our bones in the sand at the end of it all, but taking Aryenis’s cue, we lived in the Present (with the capital P), and three very pleasant days they were, and evenings that ended all too soon when Aryenis finally retired to the tent, and we rolled into our blankets under the open sky. CHAPTER XI THE CAVES “The way lies up there,” said Aryenis, pointing. “Can we climb up to those caves? I know that is the place, because I remember the arch.” She was guiding the riding camel, with me as a passenger behind. Her first slight apprehension of the ungainly beasts had quickly disappeared, and for the last two days she had insisted on the front seat and the control of the nose-rope. We were a few hundred yards out into the sand from the base of the cliffs, where, after marching six miles on the fourth morning, we had found under a projecting shoulder of rock, a little spring-fed pool with a stream running away out into the sands, doubtless to be swallowed up before very far. There was some scant vegetation, and Wrexham had halted the camels for water. A mile and a half beyond us was a semi-detached hill, which jutted out from the main mass, still steep as ever. It projected a mile or so into the desert--a long hog-back of rock, with sides precipitous enough for the first three or four hundred feet, but which then sloped comparatively gently to the crest.