ations for
camping were at once begun.

Frank lay wakeful and restless for long enough. In his excited state
sleep refused to come. Now that the goal had been reached it was hard
to believe that they were there, and had succeeded in making their way
to the neighbourhood of the far-famed cities of the Soudan with so
little difficulty. Of physical effort there had been plenty, but he had
anticipated bitter struggles and disappointments; attempts to reach the
prison of his brother in one direction, and being turned back, to
attempt it again and again in others. Instead all had been
straightforward, and their ruse had succeeded beyond all expectation.

But now that they were at one of the late Mahdi's strongholds on the
Nile the question was, Would Harry Frere be there after all, or taken
far to the south to the home of someone who held him as a slave?

Now for about the first time the adventurer fully realised the magnitude
of the task he had taken in hand. The desert journey had impressed him
by the vastness of the sandy plains and the utter desolation they had
traversed; but that only appeared now to be the threshold of the place
he had come to search. All the vast continent of Africa seemed to be
before him, dim, shadowy, and mysterious, and as he sank at last into a
feverish sleep, it was with his brother's despairing face gazing at him,
the reproachful eyes sunken and strained and looking farewell before all
was dark with the obscurity of the to-come.

"Hadn't you better rouse up now, sir?" said a familiar voice; but Frank,
after his long and painful vigil, was unable to grasp the meaning of the
words, far more to move.

"Mr Frank, sir--I mean, Ben--Ben Eddin. Humph! what an idiot I am!"
came softly out of the gloom. "It was bad enough to make such a slip
out in the desert, where there were no next door neighbours; but to go
and shout it out here, just beside this what-do-they-call-him's city was
about the maddest thing I could have done. S'pose some one had heard
me; it would have taken a great deal of lathering and scraping, more
than ever a 'Rabian Night's barber ever got through, to make people
believe I was the Hakim's slave.

"Mr--Bother! What's the matter with me this morning? I believe I'm
half asleep, or else my brains are all shook up into a muddle by that
brute of a camel. Here, Ben Eddin, rouse up and put on your best white
soot. Here's the Sheikh been with a message to say that we're al