! Besides Nell's fatal disease, the dervishes! And again
slavery, and again a return to Fashoda or to Khartum, under the hand of
the Mahdi or the lash of Abdullahi. If they caught them Nell would die
at once, while he would remain a slave the rest of the days of his
life; and if he did escape of what use was liberty to him without Nell?
How could he look into the eyes of his father or Mr. Rawlinson, if the
dervishes after her death should fling her to the hyenas. He himself
would not even be able to say where her grave was.

Such thoughts flitted through his head like lightning. Suddenly he felt
an insurmountable desire to look at Nell, and directed his steps
towards the tree. On the way he instructed Kali to extinguish the fire
and not to dare to light it during the night, after which he entered
the tree.

Nell was not sleeping and felt better. She at once communicated this
news to Stas. Saba lay close to her and warmed her with his huge body,
while she stroked his head lightly, smiling when he caught with his
jaws the subtile dust of the decayed wood floating in the streak of
light which the last rays of the setting sun formed in the tree. She
apparently was in a better frame of mind, as after a while she
addressed Stas with quite a lively mien.

"And perhaps I may not die."

"You surely will not die," Stas replied; "since after the second attack
you feel stronger, the third will not come at all."

But she began to blink with her eyelids as if she were meditating over
something and said:

"If I had bitter powders like that which made me feel so well after the
night with the lions--do you remember?--then I would not think the
least bit of dying not even so much!"

And she indicated upon her little finger just how little in that case
she would be prepared to die.

"Ah!" Stas declared, "I do not know what I would not give for a pinch
of quinine."

And he thought that if he had enough of it, he would at once treat Nell
with two powders, even, and then he would wrap her in plaids, seat her
before him on a horse, and start immediately in a direction opposite to
the one in which the camp of the dervishes was located.

In the meantime the sun set and the jungle was suddenly plunged in
darkness.

The little girl chattered yet for half an hour, after which she fell
asleep and Stas meditated further about the dervishes and quinine. His
distressed but resourceful mind began to labor and form plans, each one
bolder