But march we did, marched endlessly, and most of the time on less than a pint of vile water and a dozen ounces of cooked rice a day. The country was one endless stretch of small round pebbles that ground the soles from our boots and the skin from our feet. We were always hungry, always thirsty, always footsore. The sun at noonday scorched us, the cold of the night chilled us. One day, to make matters worse, a man who was off his head from suffering ran away and evaded capture. Following the Oriental practice, our guards must needs punish the birds in the hand for the sins of the one in the bush. For two days we were marched without a drop of water or a morsel of food. The second day they goaded us forward from daybreak to sunset. It seemed as though we must have gone a hundred miles, and I learned later that it was actually twenty. Even that was an awful distance for starving men, who hadn't the strength to walk in a straight line, to be driven. For three long weeks they herded us on. At the end of that time we arrived at what appeared to be our destination, some half-ruined Roman wells called Bir-Hakkim, the "Red Doctor" and the "White Doctor." It was not an oasis in the true sense, but only three or four caved-in cisterns, partially filled with reeking rain-water, which served as a caravan halt. There were no houses, no palms, no cultivation; only rocks and the crumbling copings of the ancient wells broke the awful monotony of the desert. Most of us arrived barefooted, all of us half-naked; but it is due to our guards to say that they were in scarcely better plight themselves, and that as opportunity offered to get old boots and rags from passing caravans they gave them to us. One day I found a bit of broken glass, and with this managed to scrape down some slivers of camel's bone to the form of clumsy needles. Yarn we made by rolling tufts of camels' hair, picked up along the way, between our palms. The resulting strand was seldom less than an eighth of an inch in diameter, and always lumpy and prone to pull apart at the joints; yet, by dint of patience and care, we were able to stitch fragments of rags together to form hats and long Arab shirts. Those of us who still had any parts of our socks and trousers left, patched and darned them as best we could with our bunchy yarn.