to the days o f Abraham, and the herdmen o f Gerar
striving with Isaac’s herdmen at the well of Contention 1
We were upon the verge o f doing the same thing
without my knowing it, at Karategin, for a shepherd
had come before us to water his flock, and, being
first come, had a r ig h t to be “ first served.” This
however would not only cause us delay, but by thè
time his bucket had descended often enough to give
drink to a thousand sheep, the water, if there were any
left, would be so muddy as to be unfit to put into our
barrels. My men represented this to the shepherd
and ominously added that the Englishman carried è
revolver, and would certainly shoot him if he did not
give way. This impromptu story caused the shepherd
to yield, so that I was not called upon to carry out their
murderous threat, and Nazar proceeded to get water
drawing it, to my astonishment, in the horses’ nosebags'
1 his was the nearest approach I had seen to “ holding
water in a sieve,” but the bags, being made o f thick
woollen material, answered the purpose admirably. We
were also able to purchase some more rope here, and
our local guide went back to his aul.
Breakfast went off pretty well for a first occasion
T he pheasant was preceded by potage au faisan, and
we made an attack upon our Russian bread from
Petro-Alexandrovsk. When looking over the hospital
there I had tasted the patients’ bread, and was so
pleased that I asked the General if the baker might
make me a number o f loaves, and these we had been
saving till we could get no more fresh native nans or
bread-cakes. The Russian loaves were now 12 days
old, and, truth compels me to add, were getting hard •
but we soaked the bread in tea, besides which wè
had cream that was wondrously accommodating. On
opening the keg at even, the motion of the camel
was found to have converted it into “ whipped ” cream,
whereas in the morning the frost of night had given
us “ iced ” cream, and in the middle of the day we
had crème au naturel. Then we sliced a melon, and
having thus partaken of déjeûner à la fourchette at
the somewhat abnormal hour of sunrise, I directed the
camels to be reloaded.
First, however, I had a little serious talk with the
men concerning despatch. From the very outset, even
as far back as Petro-Alexandrovsk, I had found it
difficult to get a satisfactory answer from Tailly to the
straightforward question, “ How many days will it take
you to get us from Khiva to Krasnovodsk ?” He said
about 12 or 14 days, and mumbled out some sort of
reckoning, at which the General only laughed, and said
the man did not really know. The Russian doctor
and engineer had taken 17 days from Iliali, but in hot
weather, and had been compelled to rest, whereas we
were going by a longer route, though in a cool
month. I gravely put it, therefore, to the men as to
how many days it would take them to reach Krasnovodsk
from where we were.
They answered “ Nine.” “ Very well,” said I. “ Then
for every day less than nine I will add ten shillings to
the present I am thinking of giving you ; whilst for
every day you take more than nine I shall deduct ten
shillings.” Remembering also what I had heard of their
intention to fling overboard some of my possessions,
I informed them that, if they lost any of my belongings,
they might expect to have the cost of it deducted from
the present. They assented to this arrangement and
then we started.