Six hundred camels for so small a force would seem out of all proportion. But it must be remembered that transport for provisions, and everything else we should need for at least a full month, was required; that we could not depend on keeping open any sort of lines of communication; and that whenever a Durbar or meeting was held, all those attending it expected to be fed, and well fed. Our very existence depended on an ample supply of food. Further, the presence of so many camels helped to uphold the game of bluff it was still necessary to play, and a distant view of these six hundred camels gave an appearance of numbers out of all proportion to our real fighting strength. Landon's route would take him by a comparatively short cut, though, even by this--over the western slopes of the Koh-i-taftan--he could not hope to accomplish the march in less than seven days. Very early in the morning Idu and I rode off on a couple of small ponies provided by the former, and he assured me that it was only a very special breed of pony that could hope to cope with the difficulties of the nine hilly miles lying between us and the meeting-place arranged with Allan and the car. Idu was fully justified in his criticism of the track we had to follow, for it grew steeper and narrower as we proceeded, until, at last, we were negotiating a mere cleft in the hill, with our elbows almost touching the rocky sides. Suddenly, my pony, who had probably been deciding that he had had enough of it, stopped dead, quivered all over and--sat down! Idu, who was immediately in front, turned round to see what had happened, and his pony promptly rolled backwards on the top of us. I got clear as well as I could for laughing, helped Idu--who was very badly shaken--to extricate himself from the ponies, and then, between us, got the ponies out of the crevasse into which they had managed to jam themselves. This took some time, and when we got them up we found the poor beasts so frightened that we had to walk them the greater part of the way. At eleven o'clock, perspiring from every pore, we reached the _rendezvous_ arranged, and to our great relief found Allan waiting, stolid, imperturbable, reliable as ever, with the car in spick-and-span order. Poor Allan little knew what he was in for. He had, of course, seen nothing of our recent little campaign, as he had remained at Robat during the past few weeks. He was, therefore, quite delighted at the prospect of a little activity. We gave our ponies to the camel sawars who had acted as guides to Allan, with instructions to take them back to Kacha, so Idu and I took our places, thankful to be in the car once more, and set off on our journey South.