They travelled the whole day over a sandy soil, at times slightly undulating, but where it was impossible to discover the least trace of a path. The sun alone indicated their course, and during the night the _kervanbashi_ (chief of caravans) guided himself by the polar star, called by the Turkomen the iron pin, because it is motionless. Gradually the sand gave place to a hard and flinty soil, on which through the silent night resounded the foot-fall of the camels. At day-break the caravan stopped to take some hours of rest, and presently Vambéry perceived the kervanbashi engaged eagerly in conversation with Hadji Bilal and Hadji Salih, the subject of which their looks, constantly directed toward him, sufficiently indicated. He pretended not to observe it, and occupied himself with renewed earnestness in turning over the pages of the Koran. Some moments after his friends came to him, and said "his foreign features excited the distrust of the kervanbashi, for this man had already incurred the anger of the king because he had some years before conducted to Khiva a European, whom this single journey had enabled to put down on paper with diabolical art all the peculiarities of the country, and he never should be able to save his head if he committed another such blunder. It is with great difficulty," added the dervishes, "that we have persuaded him to take you with us, and he has made it a condition, first, that you shall consent to be searched, and secondly, that you will swear, by the tomb of the Prophet, that you will not carry about you secretly a _wooden pen_ as these detestable Europeans always do." These words, we may imagine, were not very agreeable to Vambéry, but he had too much self-control to permit his agitation to be seen. Pretending to be very angry, he turned toward Hadji Salih, and, loud enough to be heard by the chief of caravans, replied, "Hadji, you have seen me in Teheran, and you know who I am; say to the kervanbashi that an honest man ought not to listen to the gossip of an infidel." This pretended indignation produced the desired effect; no one afterward expressed a doubt in regard to the pilgrim. Vambéry could not resolve to keep his promise, and, whatever it might have cost him to deceive his friends, he continued to make in secret some rapid notes. "Let one imagine," says he, to excuse himself, "the latter disappointment of a traveller who arriving at last, after long efforts and great peril, before a spring for which he has eagerly sighed, finds himself forbidden to moisten his parched lips."