The nights on the desert with the _Taralum_ were memorable. Sunset, dusk, darkness; then an hour or two of patient, soft-footed plodding, one dark column following another, each trying to keep in touch with the next shadowy mass in front. These hours appeared doubly cool, after the malicious heat of day, except for occasional reminders of the heat that had passed that was borne to us in puffs of hot soft wind off sand that still simmered. With the passing of day, atmospheric lights of softest rainbow hues hung over the sands, changeful and momentary and unpossessible, briefly colouring everything in the land with a gentle Asiatic glow of arresting beauty, ere vanishing before the night. It is such moments of wonderful colouring that have given to all deserts their far-famed reputation for mystic beauty, and the more remote the region the greater the effect. With the night come the stars, timidly at first, in the unclouded canopy, then in their thousands as the hours deepen. By name the natives know the planets and constellations and principal stars, and, like sailors at sea, use them as guides to check and direct their course. Time moves on. Men sing a snatch of song in effort to liven drooping spirits, some chew a few hard dates to allay a gnawing hunger, while, in my own line, we, like the others, covertly look ahead, anxious to catch the first lights of the leaders’ camp-fires, that will tell that at last the long, long day is done. [Illustration: AMONG SAND-DUNES] [Illustration: THE TOLL OF THE DESERT] We mount a rise. We do not see it in the darkness, but we feel our camels ascending. We reach the crest, and, behold! the merriest, most welcome lights in all the world twinkle in the distance. Camp for the night is immediately ahead. All fatigue, for the moment, is over, every trial is forgotten in view of those beckoning lights. Slowly the great caravan troops in; to camp as they arrive. With incredible swiftness all are busy at once, getting loads off, barracking camels, and lighting tiny fires with a few sticks from precious bundles of firewood. Hurriedly cooked, a meal of sorts is devoured ravenously. Then the camels are attended to. They are viciously hungry. So hungry that many of them have been muzzled all day, with a net over their mouths to keep them from stealing from the loads _en route_. They have now to be fed, a little fodder at a time. It is dangerous to let them gulp down the coarse baled tussock-grass over-rapidly. But they can only have a limited ration from the supply, and that disappears almost as quickly as our own repast. Then to sleep beneath the stars, dog-tired and dreamless, and utterly regardless of the din of incoming camels as the rear of the caravan continues to arrive in the encampment long into the depth of night.