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146 BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD
hay with the needle in it is nothing to this sack
with your clean handkerchief in it. X and I had
a mutual understanding, owing to which we never
attacked a sack while the other was within hearing ;
but whenever she appeared in a half-fainting condition
and asked the cook why on earth tea was so late,
I knew what she had been doing. She had asked
me, as a personal favour (the only one I've ever known
her ask) not to attack my sack in the morning,
because it was a pity to have the whole day spoilt,
and if I did it in the evening to go to bed before
she did.
But to return from this digression. Having
examined our quarters, I arranged a rug on the
open part of the raft and sat down to take in the
surroundings.
Arten was unpacking cooking-pots in the second
hut, and the other men sat about on the sacks
smoking silently. The boatmen sat on a pile of
sacks in the middle and manipulated the oars which
served to steer the raft and keep it in the fast part
of the current. The oars consisted of single young
willow-trees, with short strips of split willow bound
on one end with twigs, forming the blade ; they were
tied on to rough rowlocks made of twisted withies
wound round heavily weighted sacks. The Tigris
at this point is singularly hideous. There was not
a single blade of vegetation to be seen anywhere;
the country was a stretch of mud hills and stony desert,
and the mud banks of the river were only relieved
by the hosts of water-birds that darted in and out
or waded in the shallows. The high black escarpment,
To face 146.
THE TIGRIS AT DIARBEKR.
I