In the dark comrade called to comrade in endeavour to find one another. There is a good deal of confusion; the Awe of Silence is absent. The great cavalcade is saddled and ready to march, and, but for the sound of voices, might well be taken for a stealthy army setting out on great enterprise. The huge massed groups of men and animals have all the significance of a powerful force on the move. And, like an army, it is unwieldy at the commencement. There is a period of loitering. Some camps are late and their animals troublesome to load. Some men inquire the plan of march, and that is explained to them. While yet others say good-bye to friends they are leaving behind. Eventually a low exchange of queries and orders set the foremost camels off on the track, with others following as close behind as possible; like a mere trickle, at the beginning, running out from the black mass of a mighty flood along a tiny newly discovered channel of escape. We were off. The great journey had begun. That first day, to each possessor of a line of camels, was a tale of fractious animals and broken loads. All first days out are the same, even if the animals have only been idle in camp for a brief spell. Trouble can only be prevented to some extent. And the secret, there, is to take care that the same saddle, and the same load, if possible, is never changed from the animal to which it is originally allocated, for until the same load has been carried regularly there is bound to be trouble from individuals. They are timid of anything new, and eye any odd-shaped or odd-coloured part of a load with uneasy suspicion. But the commonest cause of trouble is from new loads that have been put up so that they fit uneasily and rub or jab the bearer; until the worried animal decides to get rid of it—which, with a buck and a plunge or two, is only a matter of a few moments. That ungodly act is disastrous enough, but it is doubled or trebled when the pranks of one involve the upset of the whole line in the neighbourhood. [Illustration: FOOD FOR CAMELS ON A DESERT JOURNEY EACH BALE WEIGHS ABOUT 80 LBS.] The day moved slowly and halts were constant in one line of camels or another, while in the wake of the caravan lay a trail of rope-ends and saddle leavings. The type of country did not help matters, for it was _reg_ of stone and rocks; rough on the camels’ feet, and uneven in contour. Nevertheless, the _Taralum_ travelled painstakingly for fourteen hours, and, after dark, reached the end of the rough _reg_ country to camp on the edge of a vast ocean of sand, that held, somewhere in its bosom, the salt-giving oases of Fachi and Bilma—the latter the goal of the caravan. Like everyone else, I was tired, yet the sounds and scenes of that first camping of the _Taralum_ were so astonishing that I almost forgot my fatigue.