ABSTRACT
Salim, their leader, was a jovial young man of twentyeight-friendly, unmercenary, a finger missing from his left hand. From him I learnt that the headman of Sif was not trusted by the brother governors of Du'an, who kept ascaris at the town to keep an eye on him. El Meshed, the city of the Munsab, marked the limit of their patrol and they had hastened back to Sif to follow out orders from Du'an. An even taller, skinnier soldier than Salim solemnly marched in the rear of our party, about three hundred yards away. On a closer inspection he looked to have had little enough to eat before joining the Ba Surrha soldiery, for his chest was starvation thin, his ribs showing their pattern through his blue-brown skin; he was an old man, nearly sixty, but agile as a goat; white-grey hair around his seamed face, with a little rabbity-tail tuft of white beard low down upon his chin, gave him somehow a spectral appearance, and I was almost expecting him to disintegrate into a skeleton if worked too hard. The other ascaris remained so far ahead that they could seldom be seen and had to be taken for granted. Salim explained to me that they were scouting, and that if they discovered suspicious-looking badu they would come back and report. The whole business of keeping
watch and ward seemed to be a delightfully haphazard affair, with two men beyond reach of recall in front, and an ancient who might have understudied Father Time bringing up the rear.
