Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 71: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Se oe aS ee Peete al > :~) te FORTY DAY ROAD om a . The oonlight and the silence flowed down on me. The pain aa i Perak better. I must have dozed. ae , When the noise came I was awake completely and instantly. Ten days of sleeping in the open had conditioned me back tothe old days of the desert war, when sleep was a suspended state in which the ears were never shut. From the same ingrained habit, I looked first at my watch. It was a quarter to two. a: ‘The noise is difficult to describe: soft, but with intense power and penetration. There was more feeling to it than sound. __ Whatever caused it was coming up the road from the south. I stared down the converging lines and they did not seem to go on as far as they did before: something was moving slowly for- ward to blot them out. It came on like a broad wall, and at last so ‘ ; ! sight and sound blended to give the answer. One camel march- ind __ ing on sand is soundless. Five hundred, a thousand—no counting = a them—were not. ! + a They came towards me thirty abreast, each one to a separate = _ track, white and grey, swaying in the rhythm of their stride. 3 _ They were piled high with bales and water-skins; robed men he _ leading them. There was an impression of horsemen in front g and to the flank. I pressed back against the rocks waiting for what I knew would come after the first division. en ___ First, the sound changed: through the slow regular pad of the _ camel feet came a low tuneless chant that was repeated over and _ over again. Then I could see the long black lines stretching back and back, rocking from side to side in unison as they shuffled =e along... Black men, black women with babies at the hip and _ the breast. ‘The steel chains that passed down each line from __wrist to wrist shone like silver snakes in the moonlight. They were abreast of me before the smell came: not unclean, but musky, tropical, alien to the clean sand. ___ While the second division of camels were passing, one of the “5 3 flank guards found me. My hands were tied behind me and I 4 __was roped to the side of a camel to plod on with the caravan while the moon went down and the stars faded and then the dawn ‘ea ar) ie flamed up from Asia. Not once do I remember being afraid: oe only curious, disbelieving, and desperately anxious to explain. M That was the worst thing afterwards. I knew that I never had f. explained, had never been able to get through to them. All I 3 __ understood was their orders to me—there were no questions _ from them, only commands. They did not seem curious. They let me know by signs what was wanted, for their Arabic was ___- strange—too guttural for me to understand. a When they made camp after dawn, I was taken to the leaders. 2 i = eh Comiclboolks. com