hours if it can be managed. Give me my hat and
stick. I'll go at once and see if berths are to be had on a P. and O.
boat. You two will begin getting absolute necessaries together in the
way of your professional needs, not forgetting your instruments and
chemicals, Frank. Take all you said. They will be heavy and bulky, but
they will pay for taking. As for me, as soon as I have settled about
the boat I will get my own few things together and see to the arms. I
have a pretty good selection of Arabian weapons. What more we require
can be obtained in the Cairene bazaar."

CHAPTER FIVE.

SHEIKH IBRAHIM.

Time works wonders, they say; so does money in able and experienced
hands.

The professor's were experienced hands, and he had ample funds at his
disposition. The result of his inquiries that morning was that he found
he could by starting the next night catch the mail which would bear him
and his friends, travelling night and day, to Brindisi--for southern
Italy, where the mail steamer would be waiting to take them on to
Ismailia. Then in a few days from starting they would have changed into
the not very efficient Egyptian railway, to be set down within sight of
the pyramids on the borders of the mighty desert, with the south open to
them, if all went as they had arranged, for their journey in search of
the prisoner gazing northward and hoping still that help might come and
his captivity and sufferings at last be ended.

It is wonderful what energy will do.

Now that the plans had been decided upon the professor worked like a
slave. Long experience had made him an adept. He knew exactly what
outfitters to go to, and when there what to select, and it was wonderful
how little he deemed necessary.

"You see we hardly want anything here, Frank, lad," he said. "Some
things we cannot get out there, but the majority of our necessaries we
must buy in Cairo, and quietly too, for if it got wind that we were
going upon such an expedition we should be stopped."

"I suppose so."

"But I can manage all that. I have an old friend or two, sheikhs who
will do anything I ask, and supply me on the quiet with followers and
tents and camels. For they love me as a brother, and you shall hear
them say all sorts of sugary flowers of speech. They will bless me, and
say that it is like the rising of the sun upon their tents to see my
noble visage once again. They will kiss the sand beneath my feet in the
warmth of t