bottles of brandy, all to last us sixty clear days, by which time, if we had not found the land of wheat and barley of ancient Kamt, we hoped at least to strike the point where the great caravan route to Wadai crosses the interior of the Libyan desert.
Then, if our expedition had proved to be—well! a wild-goose chase, we could perhaps fall in with a caravan, and in a chastened and humbled spirit attach ourselves to it, and in its train travel southwards or northwards as the case might be. This was, of course, very problematical; caravans do not travel along that route very frequently, and it was just as likely as not that, if we ever reached that point, we could comfortably starve by the wayside before we caught sight of a single human soul. Still, as a concession to common sense, this plan served well enough.
We also provided ourselves with sundry soaps and shaving creams, also with a rather more gorgeous change of attire than the one in which we meant to travel, all with a view of presenting a respectable appearance before the highly-civilised people we meant to visit. A good light folding tent and a magnificent compass completed our simple equipment. Moreover, we each carried a rifle and a revolver and a hundred rounds of ammunition, and—well!—we started.
Up to the last moment I fancy that our hosts thought that we would give up our mad undertaking, but when they actually saw us depart, and realised that we seriously meant to cross the desert with four camels and no escort, they shrugged their shoulders with true Oriental placidity. "Our lives," they said, "were our own to throw away."
The tomb of the Greek priest, from which we were, in our turn, to shoot the arrow from the east to the west, was about a couple of miles from Wady-Halfa,
