what's this?
excellent. that's terrific, d'ag. toss that up, would you.
my god, look at this!
no.
no. now we look in the other places. we're eliminating.
good, and here comes reinforcements.
marvelous plane. did you look?
we can finally consign my old bird to the scrapheap.
yes, and i think i know who this is.
fenelon-barnes.
i think you know all of us, except for geoffrey and katharine clifton, who've recently come out from england.
this is clive fenelon-barnes.
anyway, my friend here has a new theory - that zerzura doesn't exist. so we may all be chasing windmills. have some food.
your book. your herodotus!
and let that be a lesson to you!
what did you think you were doing in his tent?
you shouldn't go into another man's tent. it's inexcusable.
what did you do?
i was talking about the girl.
of course. well, we should all go out onto the terrace.
i won't hear of it. none of us will.
mrs. clifton, you'll have to forgive us. we're not accustomed to the company of women.
i'm afraid we're not having much luck obtaining funds for the expedition.
a more modest expedition, or even wait a year. remind our families we still exist.
very much so. we are all, save my friend here.
and a special thank you to geoffrey and katharine, without whose fund-raising heroics we should still be kicking our heels.
did katharine say? - geoffrey has to fly back to cairo.
why not?
my god, they're swimming!
i'll be back as quick as i can. thirty-six hours at the outside.
bermann!
certainly not.
and i'm telling you there's nothing there to explore.
which we've overflown twice.
so - on thursday you don't trust bell's map - bell was a fool, bell couldn't draw a map, but on friday he's suddenly infallible?
and where are the expedition maps?
those maps belong to his majesty's government. they're confidential. they shouldn't be left lying around for any tom, dick or mary to have sight of.
don't be so bloody nave. you know there's a war breaking out. this arrived this morning. by order of the british government - all international expeditions to be aborted by may 1939.
what do we find in the desert? arrow heads, spears. in a war, if you own the desert, you own north africa.
for god's sake, man - pull yourself together.
good, we're all here? a toast, to the international sand club - may it soon resurface.
look, either shut up, or go home.
had a letter from my wife. the wisteria is still out, which i'm looking forward to. she says dorset is gripped with invasion fever. wrong coast i should have thought, still.
bermann thinks he'll be interned, poor fellow. i'm going to do what i can, but.  and d'ag turns out to be a great admirer of mussolini. so now you can say i told you so.
we didn't care about countries. did we? brits, arabs, hungarians, germans. none of that mattered, did it? it was something finer than that.
when's clifton picking you up?
i'll leave the plane in the hangar at kufra oasis. so if you need it. hard to know how long one's talking about. we might all be back in a month or two.
i have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. comes of too long having to read so much into hardly anything at all.
may god make safety your companion.
in case you're still wondering - this is called the supasternal notch.
come and visit us in dorset. when all this nonsense is over. you'll never come to dorset.