Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by King Dean

Author:King, Dean [King, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: HIS036040
ISBN: 9780759509696
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2004-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

For another week, Ganus’s family remained in Robbins’s so-called Valley of the Shadow of Death, where, empty-handed, they searched farther and farther afield for sustenance and pushed the limits of tribal obligation, borrowing, cajoling, and filching from those who still had milk or a cache of food or water. One of Ganus’s camels had gone dry, reducing their milk supply to four quarts a day.

Robbins and Hogan crossed the hill to the east into another valley, where they found snails. Robbins stashed his in his sailcloth satchel until they could take fire from a camp and roast them. So reduced were the Arabs that when the pair returned to Ganus’s tent for zrig and Ganus discovered what they had found and eaten, he scolded them for not sharing. It was a fair rebuke, Robbins had to allow, since Ganus was always as generous as his circumstances permitted.

What Robbins could not abide was the Sahrawis’ resignation in the face of starvation. As he put it, “to waste away and go down to the grave for the want of food was too much for the small portion of philosophy imparted to me to endure with fortitude.” How maddening it was to persist on the barren Sahara and not make an effort to leave it while they still had strength. What sailor becalmed in the horse latitudes would not make every effort to set his vessel in motion again? Unable to fill their stomachs on snails, Robbins and Hogan now investigated the refuse around the camps. A pile of decaying camel bones had already been gnawed by dogs, but the sun had softened them. Robbins dug into a crevice with his teeth for a bit of gristle and nearly dislocated his jaw.

The next day, Robbins saw Deslisle for the first time since leaving the well near Cape Barbas. The cook was returning from the hilltop where he had been keeping the animals. He appeared relatively hearty and had better clothes than Hogan. Robbins and Hogan greeted Deslisle eagerly, but his mistress saw him at the same time and ordered him to keep moving. Anxious to speak to Robbins, Deslisle lingered, which infuriated the woman. She attacked him, cuffing and clawing his head. Deslisle did not dare strike back. She dragged him up the hill, scolding him loudly, and at the top, Mohammed knocked him down and clubbed him repeatedly. Deslisle could do nothing to defend himself. As he cried out in pain, Robbins fumed. “Never did I more ardently pant to revenge the injury of a shipmate,” he recalled later. “I was desperate but knew I must be humble and see my shipmate mauled to pumice.”

Near dusk, Robbins went to check on Hogan and Deslisle. He wore a new article of clothing that he had made to protect his skin from the sun. He had folded a yard-and-a-half square of the brig’s colors, cut a hole in the center, and sewn up the sides, leaving holes for his arms, to approximate a shirt.

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