easy matter, but
eventually I was able to persuade one of the men who had accompanied me
across the Salt Desert to procure fresh camels and convey me there. This
he did, and after a halt of three days we were on the road again to cross
our third desert between Birjand and Sistan, a distance of some 210
miles.

CHAPTER XIII

Departure from Birjand--A cloud like a skeleton hand--A
downpour--The village of Muht--A ruined fortress--A beautiful
sunset--A pass--Besieged by native callers--Two towers at
Golandeh--Strayed--Curious pits--Sahlabad--The impression of a
foreign bed--Fujiama's twin.

A large and most respectful crowd collected in and out of the
caravanserai to watch the departure of my caravan at five o'clock in the
evening on November 27th. We were soon out of Birjand and, steering a
south-easterly course, passed one or two large mud enclosures with a few
fruit-trees, but otherwise there was hardly any vegetation visible
anywhere--even in the immediate neighbourhood of Birjand. Everything was
as barren as barren could be.

Overhead the sky after sunset was most peculiarly marked by a weird,
black, skeleton-like hand of perfect but gigantic proportions, spreading
its long bony fingers over us. As night came on, it grew very cold and
the skeleton hand of mist compressed itself into a nasty black cloud. A
few minutes later a regular downpour drenched us to the skin and the
camels experienced great difficulty in walking on the slippery mud.

This was the first rain we had seen, or rather felt, since leaving
Teheran. Our long-unused macintoshes had been applied to such usages as
wrapping up cases of photographic plates and enveloping notebooks, so
that we could not very well get at them, now that we needed them, without
taking all the loads down. So we went on until our clothes were perfectly
saturated, when at least we had the satisfaction of knowing that we could
not get wetter than we were.

The rain came down in bucketfuls for over an hour, then luckily stopped,
and in a few moments, with a howling wind rising, the sky was clear again
and the myriads of stars shone bright like so many diamonds. The cutting
wind and our wet clothes made this march rather a chilly one, although
one felt some relief at the sensation of moisture after so many months of
intense dryness.

There was nothing whatever to see on any side, and I have never thanked
my stars so much as when, after marchi