Even although it is only an animal that has gone, Death casts a shadow that disturbs the human mind; and Elatu and I ride forward to rejoin the caravan with a pang of sadness in our hearts. But such feelings are soon deadened of further thought. Shut out and overpowered by the throbbing, awful heat of the day, which has now reached its worst. It is a heat that is tremendous; unbelievably trying, unless one has experienced it in actual fact. The full rays of the noonday sun blaze directly and intensely overhead, scorching the earth as a furnace blast; while hot-baked desert sands reflect the heat like the tray of an oven. It is small wonder that the caravan, oppressed by a pitiless force that attacks both from overhead and underfoot, wilts as a thing that is withering and sorely exhausted. In naked truth, man and beast of our little band are at the full mercy of a tyrant, and toil, yard by yard and mile by mile, slowly onward, sticking to the allotted task, because it is fated so to toil in the great ways of the desert. The shoulders of the camel-men are drooped languidly, and no one speaks; while head-coverings are drawn more and more closely about their faces in attempt to fight off the sun and protect eyes that are wearied to actual pain by the dazzling, incessant glare on the sand. Thus is the desert at its worst, and its unspeakable heat. But, through all, the camels keep ever on, though ever since the sun’s great heat set in their pace has slowed down—and, now, they are just crawling onward on their patient unquestioned task. Hour after hour the monotonous ride continues. Our band, a mere handful of outgone men who for the present are victims of circumstance destined, as it were, to travel the very plains of Hell, steeped in awful heat and desolation, from which there can never be real escape until that distant “Dreamtime” when we may come to pass out and beyond to a promised land where weary limbs and weary minds may lay them down and rest. About 4 p.m. Tezarif (the camel that has contracted an ugly swelling in one of her feet) is lagging badly, and pulling hard on the rope that secures her to the camel in front. I shook up Gumbo, dozing and listless from long, comfortless riding, and bade him dismount and get beside the ailing camel to encourage her on and to keep up with the others. Obediently the man jumped down, and I dropped back with him so that I might talk and keep him to his irksome task. Thereafter he remained beside the camel, encouraging and driving it to keep up with the caravan. And when Gumbo tired, another took his place. So, at the expense of considerable effort, the sick animal is kept to the trail. And in this way the long afternoon passed on, until, at last, the sun commenced to relax its grip on the earth, and gradually the caravan recovered a certain measure of wakefulness.