and trigger
of a rifle, and he became man again. He stood up quietly with the rifle
in his hands. The other arms were unearthed, the ammunition shared.

"Now," said Trench, and he laughed with a great thrill of joy in the
laugh. "Now I don't mind. Let them follow from Omdurman! One thing is
certain now: I shall never go back there; no, not even if they overtake
us," and he fondled the rifle which he held and spoke to it as though it
lived.

Two of the Arabs mounted the old camels and rode slowly away to
Omdurman. Abou Fatma and the other remained with the fugitives. They
mounted and trotted northeastwards. No more than a quarter of an hour
had elapsed since they had first halted at Abou Fatma's word.

All that night they rode through halfa grass and mimosa trees and went
but slowly, but they came about sunrise on to flat bare ground broken
with small hillocks.

"Are the Effendi tired?" asked Abou Fatma. "Will they stop and eat?
There is food upon the saddle of each camel."

"No; we can eat as we go."

Dates and bread and a draught of water from a zamsheyeh made up their
meal, and they ate it as they sat their camels. These, indeed, now that
they were free of the long desert grass, trotted at their quickest pace.
And at sunset that evening they stopped and rested for an hour. All
through that night they rode and the next day, straining their own
endurance and that of the beasts they were mounted on, now ascending on
to high and rocky ground, now traversing a valley, and now trotting fast
across plains of honey-coloured sand. Yet to each man the pace seemed
always as slow as a funeral. A mountain would lift itself above the rim
of the horizon at sunrise, and for the whole livelong day it stood
before their eyes, and was never a foot higher or an inch nearer. At
times, some men tilling a scanty patch of sorghum would send the
fugitives' hearts leaping in their throats, and they must make a wide
detour; or again a caravan would be sighted in the far distance by the
keen eyes of Abou Fatma, and they made their camels kneel and lay
crouched behind a rock, with their loaded rifles in their hands. Ten
miles from Abu Klea a relay of fresh camels awaited them, and upon these
they travelled, keeping a day's march westward of the Nile. Thence they
passed through the desert country of the Ababdeh, and came in sight of a
broad grey tract stretching across their path.

"The road from Berber to Merowi," said Abou Fatma. "North