d by night, because the day was intolerably hot, but even at
midnight the heat was over 100 degrees. It was a fine moonlight night;
the stars sparkled over the plain. The bells tinkled on the mules'
necks as they walked across the sand. All else was silent.

At last dawn broke. Martyn pitched his little tent under a tree,
the only shelter he could get. Gradually the heat grew more and more
intense. He was already so ill that it was difficult to travel.

"When the thermometer was above 112 degrees--fever heat," says Martyn,
"I began to lose my strength fast. It became intolerable. I wrapped
myself up in a blanket and all the covering I could get to defend
myself from the air. By this means the moisture was kept a little
longer upon the body. I thought I should have lost my senses. The
thermometer at last stood at 126 degrees. I concluded that death was
inevitable."

At last the sun went down: the thermometer crept lower: it was night
and time to start again. But Martyn had not slept or eaten. He could
hardly sit upright on his pony. Yet he set out and travelled on
through the night.

Next morning he had a little shelter of leaves and branches made, and
an Arab poured water on the leaves and on Martyn all day to try to
keep some of the frightful heat from him. But even then the heat
almost slew him. So they marched on through another night and then
camped under a grove of date palms.

"I threw myself on the burning ground and slept," Martyn wrote. "When
the tent came up I awoke in a burning fever. All day I had recourse to
the wet towel, which kept me alive, but would allow of no sleep."

At nine that night they struck camp. The ground threw up the heat that
it had taken from the sun during the day. So frightfully hot was the
air that even at midnight Martyn could not travel without a wet towel
round his face and neck.

As the night drew on the plain grew rougher: then it began to rise
to the foothills and mountains. At last the pony and mules were
clambering up rough steep paths so wild that there was (as Martyn
said) "nothing to mark the road but the rocks being a little more
worn in one place than in another." Suddenly in the darkness the pony
stopped; dimly through the gloom Martyn could see that they were on
the edge of a tremendous precipice. A single step more would have
plunged him over, to be smashed on the rocks hundreds of feet below.
Martyn did not move or try to guide the beast: he knew that the pony