The inhabitants of the tents showed the ordinary curiosity, but were not unfriendly, and the little caravan rested there for the remainder of the day. A further journey of two days over a region of sand-hills, with an occasional well, still intervened before they could reach Wady Sirhan—a long valley running directly to the populated region of the Djowf. While passing over this intermediate region an incident occurred which had wellnigh put a premature end to the travels and the travellers together. “My readers, no less than myself,” says Palgrave, “must have heard or read many a story of the simoom, or deadly wind of the desert, but for me I had never yet met it in full force; and its modified form, or _shelook_, to use the Arab phrase, that is, the sirocco of the Syrian waste, though disagreeable enough, can hardly ever be termed dangerous. Hence I had been almost inclined to set down the tales told of the strange phenomena and fatal effects of this ‘poisoned gale’ in the same category with the moving pillars of sand, recorded in many works of higher historical pretensions than ‘Thalaba.’ At those perambulatory columns and sand-smothered caravans the Bedouins, whenever I interrogated them on the subject, laughed outright, and declared that beyond an occasional dust-storm, similar to those which anyone who has passed a summer in Scinde can hardly fail to have experienced, nothing of the romantic kind just alluded to occurred in Arabia. But when questioned about the simoom, they always treated it as a much more serious matter, and such in real earnest we now found it. “It was about noon, the noon of a summer solstice in the unclouded Arabian sky over a scorched desert, when abrupt and burning gusts of wind began to blow by fits from the south, while the oppressiveness of the air increased every moment, till my companion and myself mutually asked each other what this could mean, and what was to be its result. We turned to inquire of Salim, but he had already wrapped up his face in his mantle, and bowed down and crouching on the neck of his camel, replied not a word. His comrades, the two Sherarat Bedouins, had adopted a similar position, and were equally silent. At last, after repeated interrogations, Salim, instead of replying directly to our questioning, pointed to a small black tent, providentially at no great distance in front, and said: Try to reach _that_; if we can get there we are saved.’ He added: ‘Take care that your camels do not stop and lie down;’ and then, giving his own several vigorous blows, relapsed into muffled silence.