Salaam, Arabi!

I

THE purpose of that long and lonesome trek through the hot Sudan had been accomplished. The skins had been thoroughly salted and dried. The black-maned hide of the big lion killed a few days before (he measured forty-four inches in height at the shoulder) would be, of all the specimens, perhaps the most acceptable to the Field Museum of Chicago. But I had been in the bush alone too long. The conversation of white men — plain talk, small talk, any kind of talk with my own kind — was becoming a necessity.

I saw by the calendar pasted to the inner lid of my ammunition box that it might be possible to reach home by Christmas if, by a forced march across a wide stretch of unmapped country, I could arrive at the army post of Gallabat. From Gallabat a road, passable in the dry season for army supply cars, led to Gedaref, headquarters of the Eastern Arab Corps. If I could reach Gallabat, connect with an army lorry, and so get through to Gedaref and Khartoum, I should save a solid month of travel by camel; the men could bring on the camels alone from Gallabat.

But my government maps showed an immense blank space between the headwaters of the Rahad at the Abyssinian border, where we then were, and the post at Gallabat. I knew that only one or possibly two patrols of the Eastern Arab Corps had been through that blank space several years before, and the results of their journey were shown on the map only by indefinite notations. ‘A small khor [watercourse] found here. Dry, December 1915’; and ‘a wide, sandy wadi [river bed], north and south direction, found here. Probably dry except at height of rainy season. Possibly water could be found by digging.’ There was no indication of permanent water in all that wide stretch of country, and water, of course, was the one big question. I called old Arabi and Haroun, and, with the limited Arabic I had picked up by that time and Haroun’s even more limited English, asked Arabi if he had ever crossed that dry area in his travels.

‘Aywah, wahid’ (‘Yes, one time’), said Arabi, and Haroun, after speaking further with the old man, added that Arabi claimed to have accompanied a detachment of the Eastern Arab Corps through that country four or five years before, and knew of a small village halfway across where the natives got water from a deep-dug well that never went dry. Arabi swore by an impressive array of Mohammedan saints that the village, consisting of five or six grass tukuls, was permanent and not merely a seasonal camping place of nomads. If I understood correctly and if the old man spoke the truth, we could cross that dry area without suffering severely for water — provided he could lead us straight to the village. Upon close questioning Arabi placed the village at three days’ march from the Rahad River, ’iyam tellahtah,' and pointed northeast with a skinny arm, thrusting out his chin to denote the long distance. I was anxious to save that month of camel travel over the route we had come; still, I did n’t care to take too much liberty with thirst: the power of the equatorial sun to draw water from a man’s tissues is something almost unbelievable to a Northerner. Sudan army regulations instruct officers to be sure of one and a half gallons of water a day for each man as an absolute minimum; and that rule is made for seasoned Sudanese troops.

I was thoroughly familiar with the widespread native vice of telling a white man what he wants to hear rather than facts which may be disappointing. So I cross-questioned old Arabi for an hour to satisfy myself that he really knew, first-hand, what he was talking about. In the end I came to the conclusion that the old codger had indeed been with that scouting patrol as he claimed and was not merely retailing rumor or native gossip. I was convinced that the little village was there, but I was by no means certain that Arabi could find it. However, the old fellow was positive that he could go straight to it, and appeared to be a little hurt that I should doubt his pathfinding ability. It was only common sense to be skeptical in such a serious matter, and it was only fair to the men to have their majority acceptance of the plan before deciding upon it. I ordered Haroun to call them together and ask what they thought about it.

‘They say,’ translated Haroun, ‘that if Amarooti, our father, says he can find the village — then he will find it!’ Such confidence in their ‘father,’ as they always called old Arabi, went a long way toward helping me make the decision. But Haroun added: ‘All say this except Abdullahi, and he says, “No, no! We shall all be lost and die without water.” ’ Abdullahi was a bom alarmist. He and his frightened querulousness were an old story and carried no weight with me. I decided to chance it.

‘Aywah!’ I said, folding the useless map. ‘Bukra safaría!' (‘All right! To-morrow we trek!’)

II

The camels were given a big drink that night. They, at least, would be good for six days without water. Early in the morning we filled waterskins, girbas, canteens, and our few empty bottles at the river and set out. Everyone but Abdullahi was cheerful at the start. He, as usual, was filled with lugubrious prophecies of our destruction. Toward noon, as the sun became heavier on the shoulders, I saw that Abdullahi’s pessimism was beginning to infect the other men. They showed signs of becoming sorry that they had been so willing to follow Arabi, and our progress became slower as their enthusiasm waned. In a lucky moment it occurred to me that our course lay in the direction of Mecca. Affecting surprise at the growing discouragement, I said to Haroun: —

‘What seems to be wrong with you lads? You act downhearted. Have n’t you noticed that our direction of march is straight toward Mecca? And don’t you know — can it be possible that such good Mohammedans don’t know — that no man ever died of thirst when traveling in the direction of Mecca?’

What a tall one that was! But what a difference it made! Haroun passed the good word around, and lighthearted chatter, laughter, and smiles broke out and our rate of progress substantially increased.

I had figured out that forced march pretty thoroughly before the start. We were carrying in our various containers enough water to last three full days. The camels had done little for weeks and their humps were high to lopping over. If Arabi could lead us straight to the village as he claimed to be able to do, all would be well. But suppose Arabi became confused and could n’t find the village by evening of the third day? Under those circumstances I would order an immediate return to the river. We could n’t miss the Rahad and we should be able to make it by marching two nights and one day, for there was more than a half moon. If forced to return, the suffering might be severe, but we ought to get through without casualties. Our real danger would lie in wasting precious hours of strength on a fruitless search for the village, and this I was determined not to do. If the old man missed it when he thought we should be there — then back to the river we would go as fast as the camels could travel. All this, of course, was planned on the supposition that no accident would happen to our load of water.

At the end of the first day we came to the limits of the area burned by a grass fire we had started while hunting. In that northeasterly direction it had been extinguished by heavy dews at night or by a change of wind. We entered a country of high and thick grass whose plumed tops were just level with my eyes as I sat my tall camel. Elephant trails wound through it in every direction and scattered thorn trees rose above, only the flat tops of the trees showing. Old Arabi plodded silently in the lead, his long staff in hand and his little hatchet hanging from a shoulder. It is impossible to push straight through such grass, and Arabi selected the trampled elephant road that seemed at the moment to lead most nearly in the right direction. Very soon, however, our course turned and twisted like a hurt snake, and when trails branched Arabi decided which to follow with great deliberation. The country was as level as a billiard table; not a hill or a piece of lower ground appeared on any side, and no distant mountain loomed upon the horizon. There was not the slightest trace of a landmark by which he might have checked our location — nothing but a sea of plumed and waving grass fifteen feet high, growing in an interminable open forest of acacia trees.

It had not occurred to me before that no landmark would be in sight, any more than I had expected to find the high grass unburned in this direction. The combination of the two — high grass and no landmarks — was an alarming surprise. I had been none too sure before that Arabi could find the village. I was now becoming increasingly sure that he could n’t. Ariel gazelles — dainty, fleet little things — stood a moment when surprised in the branching trails, gazed with round, startled eyes, and bounded away like wind-blown thistledown. The heads and pole-like necks and sometimes the spotted backs of tall giraffes were outlined above the grass, to stand a moment and then disappear in awkward, lurching gallops. Giraffe and ariel are great rangers. It is not unusual to find them forty miles from water, but they do not need to drink every day by any means. We were much too far from water for lions, so we had no hesitancy in marching before daylight in the mornings and after dark in the evenings.

When trekking with camels on a known caravan route through a hot country, you usually march as much as possible at night — provided, of course, you are not in lion country. You do this not only to avoid the great heat from noon until four o’clock, but also to enable your camels to browse in daylight hours, when the men can watch them and prevent straying. But on this forced march through unknown country we did not dare to keep the trail longer than two hours after dark; Arabi needed daylight to hold his course. This made it necessary to cut down the rest period in the heat of the day.

III

We were resting in the scanty shade of an acacia tree about one o’clock in the afternoon of the second day. Haroun had built a small shelter of grass and brush for me, which helped some, but I sat beneath, stripped and panting in the terrific heat. Like Sydney Smith, I longed to take off my flesh and sit in my marrowbones. The men lay sleeping beneath another tree, but the camels browsed contentedly on thorny twigs.

Unlovely, stinking, ill-natured brutes are camels, but withal the finest pack animals in the world and the only ones capable of surviving in such a wilderness of thorn bush, sand, and relentless sun. You never come to feel the slightest affection for a camel. But after a hard trip through a difficult country, a country that would kill a beautiful horse in a week and a tough mule in two, you are astonished to find your camels thriving, actually putting on flesh on a diet of thorns in heat almost unbearable to a white man. You watch them curiously at their slow, unhurried pace, carrying their three hundred and fifty pounds, never stumbling, never shying, and never showing the slightest need for that precious commodity, water. And at the finish of the trip you feel like taking off your sun helmet every time you meet a camel.

In the heat of early afternoon no wild thing stirred. Even birds were silent in the thickest bush they could find. The world was slowly baking in a mammoth oven. When all living things except those remarkable camels were adroop with lassitude, a plain brown bird, slightly larger than a sparrow, flew to the tree above the sleeping men and chirped lustily, hopping back and forth along a low limb above their heads. I watched him with surprise, thinking idly, ‘ What a little idiot he is to stir about in such heat when he might, like sane birds, take refuge in some comparatively cool thicket!’ In a moment, however, old Arabi awoke and saw the bird. He rose stiffly to his feet, shook one or two of the others hastily, speaking low in Arabic. The camp came to sudden life. Haroun hurried to me and explained that the bird was a honey guide, and if I would allow them to follow they would be sure to find a store of wild honey. Wild honey is nectar to the Sudanese. I nodded. Arabi reached for his little tomahawk and made clucking sounds in his throat in answer to the bird’s insistent chirps.

I had heard much of the honey guide (scientific name, Indicator indicator) from men whose word, like Cæsar’s wife, should be above suspicion, but nevertheless I was skeptical. I hurried into helmet, shoes, and shorts. The bird flew a short distance and alighted in another tree, hopping along a limb and again chirping excitedly. We followed in a body, old Arabi clucking in his throat as he led the way. The moment we arrived beneath the tree the bird flew to another, in a low, dipping flight, and repeated his chirping and hopping performance upon a new limb. His chirps were incessant except during the short flights between trees, and his bustling importance was too insistent to be mistaken. In each tree he waited for us, hopping back and forth and chirping. Impatience was plain in every action.

We followed about two hundred yards at a fast walk and then it occurred to me to try a little test by purposely mistaking the route. I wondered if the bird would be intelligent enough to return and set us right. I motioned the men to follow me to a tree at right angles to the course we had been taking, and explained with a grin to Haroun that I did n’t think the bird would come back for us. Haroun relayed the idea to the men, and old Arabi, who knew honey guides, smiled pityingly at my simplicity. But we all walked deliberately away from the bird to the other tree. No sooner had we started in the wrong direction than the bird circled around us and again came to a limb above our heads, chirping more excitedly than ever. He came much nearer to us than before, hopping and bouncing along the limb all in a flutter of excitement. It was as plain as the nose on a man’s face that he was doing his best to make us understand that we were wrong. It was so apparent that we all broke into a laugh. From then on we followed our guide from tree to tree, walking perhaps a quarter of a mile.

The honey guide arrived at a dead acacia, alighted on one of its topmost branches, and now, for the first time, sat perfectly still and did n’t utter a single chirp! Arabi had his old eyes on the bird, and as he saw it sit so still he muttered in Arabic, ‘In that tree is the honey.’

We walked around the tree and saw a cloud of bees buzzing in and out of an opening not very high in the trunk. Mohammed Zane pulled a handful of grass, I touched a match to it, and with the smouldering torch Mohammed was boosted to a limb. He thrust the smoking grass in the hole and waited a few minutes, then pulled out the remnants of his torch and reached in and took out the dripping combs, one by one, and passed them down to us. Arabi selected a large, juicy comb and laid it on a low limb as a payment to the bird for its intelligent work. 'Baksheeshi!’ the old fellow said as he stuck the comb on a thorn.

IV

So far the little side expedition had been highly successful. But then we made a grave error. Instead of carrying our loot to eat in camp, we paused beneath the tree and began munching the excellent stuff. No one, not even Mohammed Zane, had been stung. But in a moment old Arabi, more versed in the lore of bees than the rest of us, detected an angry note in the steady buzzing of the smoke-drugged bees. He turned his head quickly, listening — then snatched his little hatchet from the ground and with a dripping comb in his other hand set out on a dead run straight away from that tree! The rest got the idea and followed.

All but Abdullahi. Slower of wit than the others, he lagged behind. I seized a handful of grass, touched a match to it, and waved it around my head as I walked hurriedly away. A cloud of bees buzzed around me, but I kept the torch waving, expecting every moment that some valiant bee would force his way through the smoke armor and drive his spear point home. But not a bee came through that ring of smoke. The men were now far ahead, running as if a herd of elephants were after them. Abdullahi was overtaken and severely stung. I found him in camp moaning; one black eye was shut and his lower lip hung down like a blacksmith’s apron. Osman, grinning, was bathing Abdullahi’s face with precious water from a canteen.

Running true to his usual form. Abdullahi thought his last hour had come. He called repeatedly on the Prophet, requesting him to drop whatever he was doing at the moment in the dim and distant Aidenn and rally to the rescue of his faithful follower. The poor ignoramus took on in this childish vein until old Arabi shut him up with a single sharp word growled in Arabic. I wish I knew what word he used. I could have employed it to advantage later and saved some good, healthy English cuss words.

I have often wondered since that ordeal of bees what our wise bird thought of us, absent-mindedly munching honey beneath that bee tree until the bees recovered from the smoke! Our brand of intelligence had been so inferior to his own. And I have often marveled at the real brain work that bird exhibited! If ever a dumb thing reasoned, he did that day. He had found the hive, but dared not enter the hole in the tree trunk; I should imagine that a bee sting to such a small creature would be like the bite of a cobra to a man. The bird had run across our camp, and at once his tiny brain, no larger than a shoe button, had figured a way to have his chestnuts pulled from the fire. He had straightway set about the promotion of his little scheme with all the zeal and confidence of a business man floating a new corporation. He may have known from past experience that a sizable dividend would be left upon a limb. Or he may have thought that, no matter how tight and grasping we proved to be, an amount of honey, fairly substantial to him, would surely be smeared about the tree by our human clumsiness.

The cleverness of the honey guide is a most remarkable thing when you come to think of it. No other species of bird that I have ever heard of has anything in his box of tricks to compare with this stunt of the honey guide’s. And I judge from the many experiences of both white men and natives that almost every member of the honey-guide family makes a practice of this intelligent coöperation. The Sudanese depend upon him in their annual gathering of wild honey. And furthermore the natives, extremely shortsighted in almost every other way, never think of accepting the services of a honey guide without leaving a dividend for the small promoter of the enterprise. Whether they consider it merely bad luck to omit baksheesh for the bird guide, or whether they know from experience that the birds, after a few disappointments, refuse to do business, I don’t know. Surely the honey guide is worth careful study by capable scientists. In my perhaps worthless opinion we have always been too ready to ascribe evidences of intelligence in the actions of animals and birds to instinct rather than to the power of reason. I wonder if we humans are not unconsciously a little jealous of our own reasoning powers. Or perhaps our groping notion of the soul is confused in our minds somehow with the power to reason, so we hesitate unduly to admit that an animal or a bird, to which we deny a soul, can reason.

V

We set out again, and late that afternoon passed beyond the range of giraffe and ariel. Now only the wide swaths in the grass made by elephants were seen; and the elephant trails in this area had been made by elephants on trek. The black giants had not loitered here to feed; the trails were straighter and showed plainly that the great pachyderms, like ourselves, had been pushing through in haste — a sign that water was a long way off.

In mid-morning of the third day one of the largest waterskins, one that held several gallons, was rubbed against a tree as the camel passed, and a sharp dead branch tore a hole. Before the camel could be caught, the waterskin was empty. This was a blow right between the eyes! It was the last water we had, except two small canteens. We were down to bed rock! It was now a ground-hog case. Arabi must find that village by evening or the most painful suffering was sure to follow, with perhaps a tragedy or two into the bargain.

I called a halt and questioned the old man. Arabi replied in his slow and quiet speech, Haroun translating eagerly: ‘When the sun is there,’ — pointing to the western horizon, — ' he says he will find the village.’

I was sorely tempted to order an immediate return to the Rahad River, with all the suffering it would entail, but Arabi seemed confident and I decided to take the added chance and give him his allotted time to perform his miracle, but not one hour longer! The moment I detected the slightest indecision in Arabi’s actions, that moment would mark the beginning of a desperate race against thirst back to the river. Frankly, I did n’t see how Arabi or any other human being could navigate the blind terrain we had been following, over twisting trails, without the semblance of a landmark — do it for three whole days and then arrive at the infinitesimally small spot he had been searching for. In my opinion such a thing would have taxed the ability of a homing pigeon; it simply was n’t in the cards for a man to have such a miraculous sense of direction. However, sure as I was that we were now wasting precious and perhaps lifesaving hours, I was able to resurrect just enough confidence in Arabi — I suppose from the remembrance of his staunchness in past performances — to give the old man his promised time.

At the catastrophe to the water supply Abdullahi broke out in a torrent of lamentations, predicting an early and terrible demise for the lot of us, until I shut him up sharply. The men now glanced at old Arabi with looks that spoke of doubt, apprehension, and fearfulness. I knew exactly what they were thinking, for I was wandering the very same things myself: ‘Has he ever really been to the village, or does he just want to appear important? How much of his appearance of confidence is pure bluff? ’

Noon came, but we did n’t dare to stop for the usual rest in the hottest part of the day. Abdullahi lagged, again and again, until I was forced to go back and show him plainly, by signs with the camel whip, just what would happen if he kept it up. He did better for a while, but in another hour he gave up completely and stumbled along after the caravan, moaning like a thirsty dog. I was forced to order a short halt several times to allow him to keep within sight of the rearmost camel. He had already ridden much more than his share on the heavily loaded pack camels, and I knew that his disgusting state was due more to fear than to actual physical exhaustion.

The other men plodded wearily forward, very thirsty and now almost hopeless of finding the village. They had been affected much more by the loss of the water than I had expected. The native’s physical equipment is toughened to a remarkable degree to resist the particular kinds of hardships common in his country, but that excellent toughness is subject to the vicissitudes of his mental state. He lacks the ability to rise above mental depressions, and such a piece of hard luck as the accident to the waterskin literally takes all the stamina from his body; schooling of the mind is what he needs. Few natives can survive discouragement to the extent that a white man can.

Old Arabi was the exception to prove the rule. His calm and confident bearing and his facial expression did not change during the entire last day. And the old fellow did not deign to answer the childish questions incessantly flung at him by the men: ‘How far is it now?’ ‘Are you sure we can find the village in this high grass?’ ‘Are you sure the village is still there?’ Arabi answered none of these. He was legweary and he refused to ride his share of the time, often allowing another man to take his turn. He too was terribly thirsty, but the old Arab had pride which the others lacked, and he let no man see his weariness.

The sun sank lower and the men now marched in irregular spurts, speeding up for short distances and flogging the camels forward, foolishly drawing upon their reserves when thoughts of water spurred them on or a glance at the westering sun put the fear of God into their thirsty souls. After each short spurt a period of lethargy followed — a state of mind and body dangerously near to complete discouragement and final surrender. The spurts were needlessly exhausting, and the slump that followed alarming. But I could not force them to hold a sane and steady pace; only Arabi marched with the slow steadiness of an old campaigner.

VI

The fiercely blazing sun gradually turned to a molten sphere as it sank lower. At last it touched the waving plumes of grass on the far-western horizon, and still we shuffled on. It was now sunset and I could see no indications of a village anywhere near — no straying camels, no hobbled donkeys, no sign of man or domestic animal. It was about time to turn about in our tracks and begin that dreaded race against thirst to the far Rahad. However, I would give Arabi his full measure of time, a half hour longer by the watch. I actually had my watch in hand to gauge the half hour when old Arabi came to a halt at a bend in the trail ahead. I saw his ancient body relax as he leaned his weight on the staff. He said nothing. The quick thought flashed over me, ‘Now he is ready to admit that he is completely lost!’ Haroun caught up with him and asked a question in a voice husky with thirst, but Arabi did not bother to answer. Haroun peered ahead and then sprang around to face us, shouting over and over, through dry and cracked lips, the one word, ‘Moyah!’ (‘Water!’)

The men dropped lead ropes and stumbled forward in a shouting rabble, repeating the good word, ‘ Moyah! Moyah! ’ Abdullahi, trailing in the rear, heard it and recovered miraculously, passing my camel on a healthy run; his exhaustion had been 90 per cent mental. Still yelling, the men rushed around the turn, all except old Arabi. He remained leaning on his staff until I rode up beside him and saw the conical grass roofs of six tukuls surrounding a small clearing. The huts could not have been seen from a hundred yards on either side in the high grass, and the clearing itself was no more than fifty yards in diameter. Old Arabi had hit the bull’s-eye plumb centre! How he did it, following the twisting trails of elephants on a threeday march, without a single landmark and through blinding grass fifteen feet high, is a mystery that, as far as I am concerned, will never be explained. Arabi looked up at me with tired, clouded eyes, after the men had passed. His ancient, cracked, and sundried lips slowly and painfully registered a faint smile.

In a moment the men rushed back in a body, followed by a few scrawny villagers, the crowd carrying on as if each man had lost his mind. They gulped great quantities of muddy water from gourds, babbling with relief and joy. Old Arabi was surrounded, and the men set up a great shout in praise of his pathfinding genius. Extravagant songs in his honor were made up on the spur of the intoxicating moment. They pressed him close, offering brimming gourds, but old Arabi was basking in a blaze of glory. It was one of his few golden moments, and the tired old man blissfully made the most of it. His expression did not change. He accepted the vociferous adulation as a matter of course, as his due — as indeed it was.

But now the old fellow had an inspiration. He crowned the whole show nobly. The white head shook in refusal as he waved the water gourds aside with a gesture that was positively regal. He had not drunk since the accident to the waterskin, and I knew that every fibre of his being craved water. But he refused the proffered water with a motion of the arm as if he were royally uninterested; so might the great Julius himself have waved away the Roman crown. It was rank affectation, of course, a beau geste — a little boy who never grew up, showing off. But — my word! How dramatic it was! And how it impressed the caravan men and the scrawny villagers! I could n’t help smiling with swollen lips, but I was careful not to let the old man see. He clung to that iron indifference to water as long as he could, — perhaps two minutes, — then seized a big gourd, drained it at a gulp, and called for another.

All danger from thirst was now past. It would be an easy march from here to the main caravan route, Gallabat, and so to Gedaref and Khartoum. That evening beneath a canopy of blazing tropic stars I called old Arabi from feasting writh the men upon a lean goat I had purchased from the villagers. He approached my camp chair at a slow and aged pace. The strain of his responsibility had told upon him, and the long hours of the dry, forced march had stiffened his old and worn muscles. I could see that his ancient bones hurt him at every step. He bowed as low as his brittle bones would allow and stood leaning on his staff: ‘ Salaam, Ejjendi.*

*Alaik issalaam’ (‘And to you also, peace’), I returned, and handed him enough baksheesh to last a year in native villages. I added softly and from the heart, ‘ Taiyib, Arabi — taiyib ketir ’ (‘ Good work, Arabi — very good work’), and slowly shook the brown and wrinkled hand.