d more ranges standing in front of us.
Sadek, who was sweating under the weight of the rifle and camera,
grumbled that he was ill and tired, hungry and thirsty, and it was very
little consolation to think that from this spot, the two nearest wells of
drinkable water were distant one about twenty-eight miles, the other over
forty miles. We had nothing whatever with us to eat or drink.

After some three hours of uncertainty--and I must confess that it was
somewhat trying each time we had reached the top of a range, which we
climbed with anxious enthusiasm, expecting to get a glimpse of the track,
to find our view obstructed by yet another range, generally higher than
the one on which we stood,--after hours of toiling, as I was saying, we
now came to a rocky range about double the height of any we had climbed
so far.

Sadek, on looking at it, declined to climb any more. He said he knew the
track must be in the opposite direction and we should only have to climb
all these hills back again. He sat down and puffed away at cigarettes to
allay his hunger and thirst and soothe his temper, while I climbed to the
highest point, some 480 feet, above the point where I had left Sadek.
Behold! on reaching the summit, beyond another range lower to the north,
along a wide undulating plain I did discern a whitish streak like a chalk
line stretching from west to east,--unmistakably the road.

I signalled the news to Sadek, and shouted to him to come up, which he
most reluctantly did. When panting half-way up the hill, he still turned
round to the south-west and disconsolately exclaimed, "No can be road, my
good master. That is road!" (to the south-west). I ordered him to hurry
up to my point of vantage and see for himself.

"May be road, may be not road," was his obstinate verdict, when the white
streak across the plain was triumphantly pointed out to him.

"But, Sadek, can you not see the white perfectly straight line
stretching along, straighter than anything else around you?"

"I can see plenty white lines, master. _Up-stairs_ mountains,
_down-stairs_ mountains"--(by which he meant gypsum strata on the top and
foot of hills). "May be," he added, sarcastically, "all roads to Shalkot
(Quetta)!"

"Can you not see that the white track leads exactly in the direction
where my compass says we must go?"

"Pfff! Compass no good!" he exclaimed with an air of amusing superiority,
and he stooped to pick two pebbles of different colours. "T