ment for Saba and fed him with raw meat; on the other hand, at
the distress of the children, whom he knew of old and who had always
been kind to him, he looked with the utmost indifference, and when Stas
addressed him with a request that he should at least give Nell a morsel
of food, he replied, laughing:

"Go and beg."

And it finally came to the pass that Stas during the following days,
desiring to save Nell from death by starvation, begged. Nor was he
always unsuccessful. At times some former soldier or officer of the
Egyptian Khedive gave him a few piastres or a few dried figs, and
promised to aid him on the following day. Once he happened to meet a
missionary and a sister of charity, who, hearing his story, bemoaned
the fate of both children, and though they themselves were wasted with
hunger, shared with him everything which they had. They also promised
to visit them in the huts and did actually come the next day in the
hope that they might succeed in taking the children with them until the
time of the departure of the post. But Gebhr with Chamis drove them
away with courbashes. On the following day Stas met them again and
received from them a little measure of rice together with two quinine
powders, which the missionary instructed him to save most carefully in
the expectation that in Fashoda fever inevitably awaited both.

"You will ride now," he said, "alongside of the dense floating masses
in the White Nile or the so-called 'sudds'. The river, not being able
to flow freely across the barriers composed of vegetation and weeds
which the current of the water carries and deposits in the more shallow
places, forms there extensive and infectious swamps, amid which the
fever does not spare even the negroes. Beware particularly of sleeping
on the bare ground without a fire."

"We already wish to die," answered Stas, almost with a moan.

At this the missionary raised his haggard face and for a while prayed;
after which he made the sign of the cross over the boy and said:

"Trust in God. You did not deny Him; so His mercy and care will be over
you."

Stas tried not only to beg, but to work. A certain day, seeing a crowd
of men laboring at the place of prayer, he joined them, and began to
carry clay for the palisade with which the place was to be surrounded.
They jeered at and jostled him, but at evening the old sheik, who
superintended the work, gave him twelve dates. Stas was immensely
overjoyed at this compensa