t made his examination of the wounded thigh, while Calder held the
lantern above his head. As Calder had predicted, it was not a pleasant
business; for the wound crawled. The German student was glad to cover it
up again.

"I can do nothing," he said. "Perhaps, in a hospital, with baths and
dressings--! Relief will be given at all events; but more? I do not
know. Here I could not even begin to do anything at all. Do these two
men understand English?"

"No," answered Calder.

"Then I can tell you something. He did not get the hurt by falling out
of any palm tree. That is a lie. The injury was done by the blade of a
spear or some weapon of the kind."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Calder bent down suddenly towards the Arab on the angareb. Although he
never moved, the man was conscious. Calder had been looking steadily at
him, and he saw that his eyes followed the spoken words.

"You understand English?" said Calder.

The Arab could not answer with his lips, but a look of comprehension
came into his face.

"Where do you come from?" asked Calder.

The lips tried to move, but not so much as a whisper escaped from them.
Yet his eyes spoke, but spoke vainly. For the most which they could tell
was a great eagerness to answer. Calder dropped upon his knee close by
the man's head and, holding the lantern close, enunciated the towns.

"From Dongola?"

No gleam in the Arab's eyes responded to that name.

"From Metemneh? From Berber? From Omdurman? Ah!"

The Arab answered to that word. He closed his eyelids. Calder went on
still more eagerly.

"You were wounded there? No. Where then? At Berber? Yes. You were in
prison at Omdurman and escaped? No. Yet you were wounded."

Calder sank back upon his knee and reflected. His reflections roused in
him some excitement. He bent down to the Arab's ear and spoke in a lower
key.

"You were helping some one to escape? Yes. Who? El Kaimakam Trench? No."
He mentioned the names of other white captives in Omdurman, and to each
name the Arab's eyes answered "No." "It was Effendi Feversham, then?"
he said, and the eyes assented as clearly as though the lips had spoken.

But this was all the information which Calder could secure. "I too am
pledged to help Effendi Feversham," he said, but in vain. The Arab could
not speak, he could not so much as tell his name, and his companions
would not. Whatever those two men knew or suspected, they had no mind to
meddle in the matter themselves, a