there was no living thing in sight, no sign of human habitation; even the
wire road was deserted. As the nearest line of low hillocks loomed up and
was passed, you knew the next would be precisely the same, and the next, as
far as the remote horizon. In places the route was strewn with bones of
horses and camels, while here and there a human arm or leg protruded from
the sand, for the Turks did not dig very deeply, and the desert soon gives
up its dead. At Romani especially the ground was littered with bones, great
ravens hung over the putrifying bodies of animals, and a horrid, fetid
smell pervaded the atmosphere. We were glad to get away from this Golgotha
of the desert.

Another rather curious feature was the appearance in the midst of the dunes
of a broad, flat expanse of sand covered with glittering white particles,
damp and salty to the taste, and exactly like the bed of a shallow lake.
Curious, because these "subkuts," as they are called, were seldom found
near a well, and it was difficult to see whence came the water with which
obviously at some time of the year they were covered.

We welcomed them for strictly utilitarian reasons; it was a great relief to
the horses to pull the guns and waggons over the firm sand for an hour or
two. Sometimes, indeed, it took half a day to cross a subkut.

At one point we came across one of the strangest things I have ever seen in
the desert. This was a small hill literally blazing with poppies! Whether
some migrating birds had dropped the seeds here or whether there was some
botanical reason for their appearance, I do not know, but it was a
beautiful and wonderful sight; a riot of scarlet in a barren land. It was
worth a bad quarter of an hour from nostalgia to get a glimpse of home,
after the horror we had just left.

Occasionally the dreary monotony of the days was broken by the visits of
Turkish scouting aeroplanes which hovered about us for a quarter of an hour
or so, until they had found out all they wanted to know, while the long
line of guns and waggons broke up and scattered itself over the desert,
lest the Turks should also feel inclined to drop a little present. This
kindness was always denied to us, however.

Apart from these visits mile followed mile almost without incident. But
there came a day, to be marked prominently as one of these days when
nothing seems to go right.

We awoke to a bluster of blinding sand so that the morning was darkened
with it. Brea