heir minds, not
without its usual accompaniment of fear; and although they no longer
kept their places, the movement now observable among them was that they
gathered closer together, and appeared to enter upon a grave
consultation.

This was terminated by some of them once more proceeding to the
embouchure of the ravine, and betaking themselves to a fresh scrutiny of
the tracks made by the shoes of the midshipmen; while the rest sate
silently upon their horses and maherries, awaiting the result.

The footmarks of the three mids were still easily traceable, even on the
ground already trampled by the Arabs, their horses, and maherries. The
"cloots" of a camel would not have been more conspicuous in the mud of
an English road, than were the shoe-prints of the three young seamen in
the sands of the Saara. The Arab trackers had no difficulty in making
them out; and in a few minutes had traced them from the mouth of the
gorge almost in a direct line to the sea. There, however, there was a
breadth of wet sea-beach, where the springy sand instantly obliterated
any foot-mark that might be made upon it, and there the tracks ended.

But why should they have extended farther? No one could have gone
beyond that point, without either walking straight into the water, or
keeping along the strip of sea-beach, upwards or downwards.

The fugitives could not have escaped in either way, unless they had
taken to the water and committed suicide by drowning themselves. Up the
coast or down it they would have been seen to a certainty.

Their pursuers, clustering around the place where the tracks terminated,
were no wiser than ever. Some of them were ready to believe that
drowning had been the fate of the castaways upon their coast, and so
stated it to their companions. But they spoke only conjectures, and in
tones that told them, like the rest, to be under the influence of some
superstitious fear. Despite their confidence in the protection of their
boasted Prophet, they felt a natural dread of that wilderness of waters,
less known to them than the wilderness of sand.

Ere long they withdrew from its presence; and betook themselves back to
their encampment, under a half belief that the three individuals seen
and pursued had either drowned themselves in the great deep, or by some
mysterious means known to these strange men of the sea, had escaped
across its far-reaching waters.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

A DOUBLE PREDICAMENT.

Short