Our men that morning had behaved in a peculiar way, for each of them had come to make his salaam to us; not that we attached much importance at the time to it, still it flitted across our minds that they were becoming very faithful muleteers all at once, and perhaps intended doing better work for the future. That evening we impressed upon them the necessity of making double marches again, as the last two days we had only made single, and told them how impossible it was to march much further without meeting somebody, and gave orders for them to commence loading at 3.30 A.M.
On waking up the following morning we found no attempt was being made to collect the mules, and it was 5 o'clock before they could be induced to bring them all in from grazing. Then we noticed that muttering was going on, but no attempt at loading up. Failing to elicit any reply from them for their conduct, I upbraided them severely for their laziness, and told them that if the only thing they wanted was to remain where they were and not come along with us any more, to do so by all means, but that Malcolm, Shahzad Mir, and myself, whatever they might choose to do, intended marching. Thereupon they replied sullenly that they would go no further, and hurriedly taking up their belongings from amongst a heap of baggage, they moved off in a body in a southerly direction, and were soon hidden from sight by the rising ground.
All this happened in a very short space of time, and fortunately, at the moment of the dispute, Esau and Lassoo were a little way off, busy with our things, or they too would have joined the deserters, as they one day afterwards told us. As it was, when we began to collect the mules again to try and load them, Lassoo was very uncertain in his mind as to which party he should throw his lot in with. Had he gone off with the muleteers, our difficulties would have been doubled, for none of us had had much experience in loading mules, and, even with it, loading a mule properly is no easy matter, whereas Lassoo had been a muleteer, and was far handier and quicker at the work than any of our other men. This we had already noticed, as he often used to give them a helping hand.
It was some time before we could collect all the mules again. Some of them seemed to know there was something up, and there was every chance of their being deserters. One little black chap in fact was so clever at evading our united efforts to catch him, that we had to give him up as a bad job, and load eleven animals instead of twelve.