in the pleasant countries of
sleep.

CHAPTER XXIX

COLONEL TRENCH ASSUMES A KNOWLEDGE OF CHEMISTRY

"Three more days." Both men fell asleep with these words upon their
lips. But the next morning Trench waked up and complained of a fever;
and the fever rapidly gained upon him, so that before the afternoon had
come he was light-headed, and those services which he had performed for
Feversham, Feversham had now to perform for him. The thousand nights of
the House of Stone had done their work. But it was no mere coincidence
that Trench should suddenly be struck down by them at the very moment
when the door of his prison was opening. The great revulsion of joy
which had come to him so unexpectedly had been too much for his
exhausted body. The actual prospect of escape had been the crowning
trial which he could not endure.

"In a few days he will be well," said Feversham. "It is nothing."

"It is _Umm Sabbah_," answered Ibrahim, shaking his head, the terrible
typhus fever which had struck down so many in that infected gaol and
carried them off upon the seventh day.

Feversham refused to believe. "It is nothing," he repeated in a sort of
passionate obstinacy; but in his mind there ran another question, "Will
the men with the camels wait?" Each day as he went to the Nile he saw
Abou Fatma in the blue robe at his post; each day the man made his sign,
and each day Feversham gave no answer. Meanwhile with Ibrahim's help he
nursed Trench. The boy came daily to the prison with food; he was sent
out to buy tamarinds, dates, and roots, out of which Ibrahim brewed
cooling draughts. Together they carried Trench from shade to shade as
the sun moved across the zareeba. Some further assistance was provided
for the starving family of Idris, and the forty-pound chains which
Trench wore were consequently removed. He was given vegetable marrow
soaked in salt water, his mouth was packed with butter, his body
anointed and wrapped close in camel-cloths. The fever took its course,
and on the seventh day Ibrahim said:--

"This is the last. To-night he will die."

"No," replied Feversham, "that is impossible. 'In his own parish,' he
said, 'beneath the trees he knew.' Not here, no." And he spoke again
with a passionate obstinacy. He was no longer thinking of the man in the
blue robe outside the prison walls, or of the chances of escape. The
fear that the third feather would never be brought back to Ethne, that
she would never have th