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He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again. "I suppose it must be a sort of speech. Would to God I knew certainly the thing that should be said! Aeroplanes at Arawan! They must have started before the main fleet. And the people only ready! Surely..." "Oh! what does it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt the light grow brighter.
Our salutation to Al Mustafa and his brother Abdal Cadir, and tell the Hajj al Behir, for God's sake not to send us any thing. Of a truth, we sincerely hope to fulfil your commissions, but in this land there is neither buying nor selling. By G d, neither in Arawan nor in Timbuctoo, have we seen any one who will buy of you for a mithcal, nor for a kirat.
There came messengers to tell that a great fleet of aeroplanes was rushing between the sky and Avignon. He went to the crystal dial in the corner and assured himself that the thing was so. He went to the chart room and consulted a map to measure the distances of Avignon, New Arawan, and London. He made swift calculations.
Laing was, therefore, driven to go by way of El Arawan, where he hoped to join a caravan of Moorish merchants taking salt to Sansanding. But five days after he left Timbuctoo, his caravan was joined by a fanatic sheikh, named Hamed-ould-Habib, chief of the Zawat tribe, and Laing was at once arrested under pretence of his having entered their country without authorization.
Starting on the 4th of May, 1828, he arrived, after terrible sufferings from the heat, and a sand-storm in which he was caught, at El Arawan, a town of no private resources, but important as the emporium for the Toudeyni salt, exported at Sansanding, on the banks of the Niger, and also as the halting-place of caravans from Tafilet, Mogadore, Ghât, Drat, and Tripoli, the merchants here exchanging European wares for ivory, gold, slaves, wax, honey, and Soudan stuffs.
While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Arawan. "Arawan?" he said. "Where is that? But anyhow, they are coming. They will be here. When?" "By twilight." "Great God! In only a few hours. What news of the flying stages?" he asked. "The people of the south-west wards are ready." "Ready!"
On the 19th May, the caravan left El Arawan for Morocco, by way of the Sahara. To the traveller's usual sufferings from heat, thirst, and privations of all kinds, was now added the pain of a wound incurred in a fall from his camel.
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