icide cling madly
to the bridge-pier as the river sweeps him by? Or is it that Nature is
so afraid that all her weary workmen may suddenly throw down their tools
and strike, that she has invented this fashion of keeping them constant
to their present work? But there it is, and all these tired, harassed,
humiliated folk rejoiced in the few more hours of suffering which were
left to them.

CHAPTER VII.

There was nothing to show them as they journeyed onwards that they were
not on the very spot that they had passed at sunset upon the evening
before. The region of fantastic black hills and orange sand which
bordered the river had long been left behind, and everywhere now was the
same brown, rolling, gravelly plain, the ground-swell with the shining
rounded pebbles upon its surface, and the occasional little sprouts of
sage-green camel-grass. Behind and before it extended, to where far
away in front of them it sloped upwards towards a line of violet hills.
The sun was not high enough yet to cause the tropical shimmer, and the
wide landscape, brown with its violet edging, stood out with a hard
clearness in that dry, pure air. The long caravan straggled along at
the slow swing of the baggage-camels. Far out on the flanks rode the
vedettes, halting at every rise, and peering backwards with their hands
shading their eyes. In the distance their spears and rifles seemed to
stick out of them, straight and thin, like needles in knitting.

"How far do you suppose we are from the Nile?" asked Cochrane. He rode
with his chin on his shoulder and his eyes straining wistfully to the
eastern skyline.

"A good fifty miles," Belmont answered.

"Not so much as that," said the Colonel. "We could not have been moving
more than fifteen or sixteen hours, and a camel does not do more than
two and a half miles an hour unless it is trotting. That would only
give about forty miles, but still it is, I fear, rather far for a
rescue. I don't know that we are much the better for this postponement.
What have we to hope for? We may just as well take our gruel."

"Never say die!" cried the cheery Irishman. "There's plenty of time
between this and mid-day. Hamilton and Hedley of the Camel Corps are
good boys, and they'll be after us like a streak. They'll have no
baggage-camels to hold them back, you can lay your life on that! Little
did I think, when I dined with them at mess that last night, and they
were telling me all thei