So one morning the riding camels kneeled down, the tents collapsed, were rolled up and sent forward, and they started to go still farther into the wilds.

They made a detour in the oasis to give their Bedouins time to pitch their camp in the sands, and Ibrahim an hour or two to prepare everything for their arrival.  It was already afternoon when they were on the track that leads to the lake, leaving the groves of palms behind them and the low houses of the fellahin, moving slowly towards the sand-hills that appeared far off, where huddled the patched and discoloured tents of the gipsies and the almost naked fishermen who are the only dwellers in this strange and blanched desolation, where the sands and the salty waters meet in a wilderness of tamarisk bushes.

It was a grey and windless day, and the sky looked much lower than it usually does in Egypt.  The atmosphere was sad.  Clouds of wild pigeons flew up to right and left of them, circling over the now diminishing crops and the little runlets of water that soon would die away where sterility’s empire began.  In low, yet penetrating, voices the camel men sang the songs of the sands, as they ran on, treading softly with naked feet.  Hamza, who accompanied the little caravan with his donkey in case Mrs. Armine grew tired of her camel, holding his hieratic wand, kept always softly and unweariedly behind them.

And thus, always accompanied by the hum and the twittering of a melancholy music, they went on towards the lake.

Upon Nigel’s beast were slung his guns.  He was eagerly looking forward to his holiday.  He had been toiling really hard with his fellahin, often almost up to his knees in mud and water, driving the sand-plough, working the small and primitive engines, digging, planting, even following the hand-plough drawn by a camel yoked to a donkey.  He was in grand condition, hard as nails, burnt by the sun, joyful with the almost careless joy that is born of a health made perfect by labour.  The desolation before them to him seemed a land of promise, for he was entering it with Ruby, and in it there were thousands of wild duck, and jackals that slunk out by night among the stunted tamarisk bushes.

“We seem to be going to the end of the world,” she said.

She was swaying gently to and fro with the movement of her camel, which had just turned to the right, after following for an immense time a straight track that was cut through the crops, and that never deviated to right or left.  Now sand appeared.  On their left, and parallel to them, crept a sluggish stream of water between uneven banks of sand.  And the track was up and down, and here and there showed humps, and deep ruts, and sometimes holes.  The crops began to be sparser; no more houses or huts were visible; but far away in the white and wintry distance, looking almost like discolourations upon a sheet, were scattered low brown and black tents, which seemed to be crouching on the desolate ground.