In the Mahdi's Grasp

George Manville Fenn

"In the Mahdi's Grasp"

Chapter One.

In Wimpole Street.

Sam—or, as he liked to be called, “Mr Samuel,” or “Mr Downes,” holding as he did the important post of confidential and body-servant to Dr Robert Morris, a position which made it necessary for him to open the door to patients and usher them into the consulting-room, and upon particular occasions be called in to help with a visitor who had turned faint about nothing—“a poor plucked ’un,” as he termed him—

To begin again:—

Sam, who was in his best black and stiffest white tie, consequent upon “the doctor” having company to dinner that evening, had just come out of the dining-room of the dingy house in Wimpole Street, carrying a mahogany tray full of dish covers, when cook opened the glass door at the top of the kitchen stairs, thrust her head into the hall, looked eagerly at Sam, as she stood fanning her superheated face with her apron, and said—

“Well?”

There was a folding pair of trestles standing ready,

and Sam placed the tray upon them, raised a white damask napkin from where it hung over his arm, and was about to wipe his perspiring forehead with it, when cook exclaimed sharply—

“Sam!”

“Forgot,” said that gentleman, and he replaced the napkin upon his arm and took out a clean pocket-handkerchief, did what was necessary, and then repeated cook’s word—

“Well?”

“Did they say anything about the veal cutlets?”

“No,” said Sam, shaking his head.

“Nor yet about the curry?”

“No. And they didn’t say a word about the soup, nor half a word about the fish.”

“My chycest gravy soup, ar lar prin temps” said cook bitterly, “and filly de sole mater de hôtel. One might just as well be cutting chaff for horses. I don’t see any use in toiling and moiling over the things as I do. Mr Landon’s just as bad as master, every bit. I don’t believe either of ’em’s got a bit o’ taste. Hot as everything was, too!”

“Spesherly the plates,” said Sam solemnly. “Burnt one of my fingers when the napkin slipped.”

“Then you should have took care. What’s a dinner unless the plates and dishes are hot?”

“What, indeed?” said Sam; “but they don’t take no notice of anything. My plate looked lovely, you could see your face out o’ shape in every spoon; and I don’t believe they even saw the eighteen-pen’orth o’ flowers on the table.”

“Savages! that’s what they are,” said cook. “But they did eat the things.”

“Yes, they pecked at ’em, but they was talking all the time.”

“About my cooking?”

“Not they! The doctor was talking about a surgical case he had been to see at the hospital. Something about a soldier as had been walking about for three years with a bit of broken spear stuck in him out in the Soudan.”

“Ugh!” grunted cook, with a shudder of disgust. “That was over the veal cutlets,” said Sam thoughtfully.

“And what did Mr Landon say? He ought to have known better than to talk about such ’orrid stuff over his meals.”

“Him?” said Sam, with a grin of contempt; “why, he’s worse than master.”

“He couldn’t be, Sam.”

“Couldn’t? But he is. Master does talk about live people as he does good to. Mr Landon don’t. He began over the curry.”

“Made with best curry paste too, and with scraped cocoanut, a squeeze of lemon, a toemarter, and some slices of apple in, just as old Colonel Cartelow taught me hisself. Talk about throwing pearls! And pray what did Mr Landon talk about?”

“Mummies.”

“Ugh!” ejaculated cook. “I saw some of ’em once, at the British Museum; but never no more! The idea of bringing a mummy on to a dinner-table!”

“Ah,” said Sam, “it’s a good job, old lady, that you don’t hear all that I do.”

“So I suppose,” said cook, with a snort. “And he calls hisself a professor!”

“No, no, he don’t, old lady. It’s other people calls him a professor, and I suppose he is a very clever man.”

“I don’t hold with such clever people. I like folks as are clever enough to understand good cooking. Professor, indeed! I should like to professor him!”

“Well, master’s no better,” said Sam. “Look at the trouble I have with him to keep him decent. If I didn’t watch him he’d put on anything. I can’t even keep a book out of his hand when I’m cutting his hair. Only yesterday he gives a duck down to cut the leaf of his book just at an awk’ard moment, and of course in goes the point of the scissors.”

“Serve him right!” said cook.

“And what do you think he said?”

“Oh, don’t ask me.”

“Nothing; and I dabbed the place and put a bit o’ black court-plaister on his ear, and I don’t hardly believe he even knew of it.”

“I’m not surprised,” said cook indignantly. “Them two read and read till they’re a pair of regular old scribums. Anyone would think they were old ancient men instead of being— How old is master?”

“Six years older than me.”

“And you’re six-and-twenty.”

“Yes.”

“And a fine, handsome man too.”

“Thankye, cook,” said Sam, smiling.

“Get out! I don’t mean you. Master. How old’s the professor?”

“Oh, he’s thirty-five,” said Sam, in rather a disappointed tone.

“And looks it,” said cook. “Well, I wish he’d go abroad again to his nasty grave-digging in the sands, and then praps master would have decent people to dine with him. Oh! There’s the front bell.”

Cook dived down into the lower regions, and Sam opened the folding inner doors to go and answer the street door bell, frowning the while.

“Wanted for some patient,” he muttered sourly. “I do wish people would have their accidents at decent times.”

Chapter Two.

“News! News!”

On the other side of the dining-room door Doctor Morris, a thoughtful-looking man of goodly presence, and the better looking for a calm ignorance of his being handsome, was seated opposite to his thin, yellow-skinned, and rather withered, nervous-looking old college friend, both partaking slowly of the good things the doctor’s domestic had prepared for them, as if it came perfectly natural to them to follow out the proverbial words of the old Greek philosopher who bade his pupils, “Live not to eat, but eat to live.”

As Sam had truthfully said, they had been talking very learnedly about their investigations in the particular branches of science which they had followed up since their old school and college days when they had begun their friendship, in company with another companion, missing now; and the doctor had said, with a far-off look in his large dark eyes—

“No, Fred, old chap, I don’t want to settle down here yet, because I know how it will be. Once I regularly begin, the practice will completely swallow me, as it did the dear old dad. People came from far and wide to be treated by him, and he had hardly an hour to call his own. Of course I shall be glad to do the same, for it’s a duty to one’s fellow-creatures; but I want to leave it all to old Stanley for another two or three years while I travel and see more of the world. I should like to go with some army if I could.”

“Yes,” said his guest, “I see; as a volunteer surgeon.”

“Exactly; the experience and confidence I should gain would be so great. After that, here is my place, and I could relieve Stanley till he retires, which he says he shall do as soon as I like to take the old practice fully in hand.”

“Hah! Yes, Bob,” said the visitor. “There’s nothing like travel—seeing foreign countries, with some special pursuit to follow. I’m like a fish out of water now, with all this trouble in Egypt. Oh, hang the Khalifa, or Mahdi, or whatever they call him!”

“That’s what a good many people would like to do,” said the doctor drily.

“Like to? I should like to do it myself,” cried Landon, with his yellow face flushing. “The wretch, the impostor, the cruel, heartless brute! Poor Harry Frere! as handsome, manly, true-hearted a gentleman as ever breathed.”

“Hah, yes!” said the doctor, sighing. “Don’t talk about it, old fellow. It makes me miserable every night as it is.”

“Miserable? Yes, for if ever friend was like a brother poor old Harry was. He had only one fault in him, and that was his blind faith and belief in poor Gordon.”

“Fault?”

“No, no, not fault. You know what I mean; but it is so pitiful to think of. Only the other day we gave him that dinner on his appointment to his regiment in the Egyptian army, and he is off to Cairo. Then the next thing is that he goes on the expedition to join Gordon up the country.”

“And the next news,” said the doctor sadly, “is that he and all with him have been massacred, fighting in poor Gordon’s defence.”

“Horrible! Horrible!” said Landon passionately. “So bright, so brave a lad, with, in the ordinary course, a good manly career of fifty years before him.”

“Think there is any possibility of his having escaped after all?” said the doctor, after a pause.

“Not a bit, poor lad. I was red-hot to go up the country somehow or other last year when I was about to investigate those buried tombs of the Ra Sa dynasty. I wanted to give up the search for those mummies and the stores of old incised inscriptions.”

“Yes, and you applied for permission,” said the doctor.

“Like an idiot,” said Landon angrily, “instead of keeping my own counsel and going without saying a word. I might have found poor old Hal a prisoner, or a slave, or something. But what did the authorities say?”

“That they were quite convinced that there were no survivors of the last expedition, and that they must debar your proceeding up the country.”

“Debar!” cried Landon, with a peculiar laugh. “Splendid word for it. Bar, indeed! Yes, and they politely bundled me out of the country just when I was on the scent of some of the most wonderful discoveries ever made, connected with the ancient Egyptian civilisation.”

“You must wait a few years, and when the country is settled try again.”

“I was willing to give up further researches then, but they wouldn’t let me go in search of poor Harry.”

“Their belief was that the attempt would be fatal.”

“But they did not know; I was the best judge of that. See what a knowledge I have of the people and their language. I believe I could have gone anywhere.”

“That was young Frank’s belief.”

“Yes, but that was different. The boy did not know what he was talking about. He’d have been murdered before he had gone fifty miles up the country.”

“It was very brave and true of him, though.”

“Of course,” said Landon, “and I should have risked taking him with me if I could have obtained permission. But perhaps it was better that he should stick to his chemistry.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, with a sigh, “and that you should have been sent home.”

“Nonsense! I say it was a disgraceful thing that a scientist like myself should be so treated.”

“But the result is that Harry’s brother is safe at home, Fred, and that I have not lost another companion.”

The doctor stretched out his hand to his rather excitable friend, who grasped it directly.

“That’s very good of you, Bob, old fellow. Thank you; but I felt it bitterly not being allowed to go in search of poor Harry.”

“Yes, but so did Frank.”

“Of course, poor boy. He would. Ah, well, I tried my best. I feel it, though, and I am very miserable doing my work in the museum instead of in Egypt amongst the sand. I suppose the upper country will become settled again.”

“Sure to,” said the doctor, “and in the meantime why don’t you go and try Nineveh or Babylon?”

“No; I can’t take up an entirely fresh rut. I must give years upon years yet to the sand-buried cities and tombs of Egypt. Ah! what an endless mine of wonders it is.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“With everything so preserved by the drifting sand.”

“But the ruins of the Tigris and Euphrates must be equally interesting.”

“They can’t be.”

“But look here: you can’t go to Egypt now, and you could to Nineveh. Have a trip there, and I’ll go with you.”

“You will, Bob?” cried Landon excitedly.

“I will, Fred, on my word.”

“Then we will, Bob,” said the professor enthusiastically. “We’ll start and— No, we won’t. Egypt is my motto, and much as I should like to have you for a companion, no, sir, no. As the old woman said, ‘Wild horses sha’n’t drag me from my original plans and unfinished work.’ I must get back to the sand. I’d give anything to be there digging.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor. “After all, it is a nasty, ghoulish business: moleing in the old tombs and unrolling mummies.”

“It may seem so to you, but to me it is intensely interesting. Besides, much as you condemn it, this is the only way to find out the history—the manners and customs of the people two and three thousand years ago.”

“The bell!” exclaimed the doctor. “I hope no poor creature wants me to-night.”

“So do I,” said Landon, “for my own sake as well as for his or hers. I wanted a long chat with you as soon as this tiresome dinner is at an end.”

“Hark,” said the doctor. “Some one has come in. Yes, I’m wanted, and— Hullo, Frank, my dear boy, how are you?” he cried, as a youthful-looking young man, who appeared flushed and excited, threw open the door without waiting to be announced, and strode in, to nod to first one and then the other.

“Why, there is something the matter!” said the doctor quickly. “You want to see me?”

“To see you? Yes, of course,” said the young man shaking hands hurriedly. “No, no, not professionally. I hurried on to Old Bones, but the servant said he had come to dine with you, so I jumped into a cab and made the fellow canter here.”

“Then you have come for a snack with us. Wish I’d known, and we’d have waited. Sit down, my lad. Why didn’t you come sooner?”

“Dinner?” cried the young man, ignoring the chair, and beginning to stride up and down the room, swinging his arms excitedly; “don’t talk to me about dinner!”

“Very well, little man,” said the professor, smiling; “but don’t jump quite out of your skin.”

The newcomer turned upon the speaker sharply, and stopping short stood pointing at him.

“Hark at that fellow, doctor,” he cried. “That’s Old Bones all over. He’s as cool as one of his dry mummies. Why, my news is enough to make any fellow with a heart jump out of his skin!”

“Sit still, Bob,” said the professor quietly; “the boy has made a discovery.”

“Yes, a discovery,” cried the newcomer—“a discovery!” and he brought his hand down so heavily upon the dining table that the glasses jumped.

“That’s it,” said the professor; “metaphorically speaking, he has been pouring sulphuric acid upon the carbonate of lime of his composition, and all this effervescence is the consequence. He’ll be better soon. Now, Frank, boy, what is the discovery—something that will set the Thames on fire?”

“Have you got a good appointment as chemist, Frank?” said the doctor.

“Discovery—appointment!” cried the young man, with his voice breaking from the emotion he felt. “Something a thousand times better than either of those. It’s the news of news, I tell you— Hal!”

His two hearers sprang to their feet and rushed at him excitedly, each seizing a hand.

“What about him?” cried the doctor.

“Not dead?” shouted the professor.

“No—no—no!” cried the young man wildly, and then his voice thoroughly broke, becoming almost inaudible as he tried to declare his news.

“I can’t bear it,” he panted; “I can’t bear it. Morris—Landon—don’t take any notice of me—I’ve kept all this in for days, and now—now— Oh, tell me—is it true, or am I going mad?”

The young man sank heavily into the chair to which his friends helped him, and then he lay back quivering, with his hands covering his face, while the doctor made a sign to his companion and went hurriedly into his consulting-room, where he turned up the gas and then opened a cabinet, from which he took down a stoppered bottle and a graduated glass, into which he carefully measured a small portion, half filled the glass from a table filter, and then hurried back into the dining-room.

“Drink this, Frank, my boy,” he said.

“No, no; let me be. I shall soon come round.”

“Drink this, my lad,” said the doctor sternly; “it is for your good.”

The young man caught the glass from his friend’s hand, tossed down the contents, shuddered, and then drew a deep breath, pulling himself together directly.

“I’m better now,” he said. “It has all been such a shock, and I’ve been travelling night and day.”

“Where from?” said the doctor, so as to give the young fellow time for the medicine to produce its effect.

“Berlin,” was the reply.

“Berlin? That accounts for it. I was wondering why you had not been here. I thought you were in Paris about some mineral business.”

“I was there, but I heard some news about—about poor Hal.”

“Indeed?” said the professor, growing excited now.

“Yes, it was from a gentleman who had escaped out of Khartoum.”

“Go on, my lad; go on,” said Morris.

“Yes, yes, I can go on now,” said the young man calmly. “Don’t think any more about what I said.”

“No, no, of course not, Frank, my lad,” said the doctor; “but pray speak out. Landon and I are suffering pain.”

“Of course, and I’ve travelled night and day as I told you, so as to bring you the news myself. This German gentleman has been a prisoner ever since Khartoum was taken by the Mahdi, and only managed to get out of the place in disguise six months ago.”

“Yes, yes,” said the doctor excitedly, and the professor took up a carafe and made it rattle against a glass as he hurriedly poured out some water and drank it with avidity.

“He knew poor old Hal well by sight, and spoke to him twice, and heard who he was. He was alive, and seemed to be well the last time this gentleman saw him; but he was a miserable slave in irons without the slightest prospect of getting away.”

“Hah!” exclaimed the doctor, dropping into a chair and beginning to wipe his forehead.

“Oh!” groaned the professor, sinking back in his chair, but only to become excited directly after, as he turned upon the bearer of the news.

“But he’s alive, Frank, boy! he’s alive!” he cried, in a peculiarly altered voice.

“Yes, thank Heaven!” said Frank Frere softly; “he is alive.”

No one spoke for a few moments. Then the professor began again excitedly—

“Look here,” he cried, “both of you; that German sausage is a fool!”

The others turned on him with wondering eyes as if they doubted his sanity, a notion quite pardonable from his manner of speaking and the wild look he had given himself by thrusting both his hands through his rather long, shaggy black hair, and making it stand up on end.

“Well,” he said sharply, “what are you two staring at?”

“Well, Fred,” said the doctor smiling, “I suppose it was at you.”

“And pray why were you staring in that peculiar way at me? Here, you answer—you, Frank.”

“I was staring on account of the sausage,” said the young man, sinking back in his chair and laughing aloud.

“Here, Bob,” said the professor excitedly, “what have you been giving this fellow—ether? It’s too strong for him. Got on his nerves.”

“Nonsense,” said the doctor, joining softly in their young friend’s mirth. “What makes you think that?”

“Why, you heard. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about—staring on account of the sausage!”

“Well, that’s why I was looking at you so hard.”

The professor stared now in turn, passed one hand across his forehead, stared again, and then said gravely—

“I say, you two, has this glorious news sent you both out of your minds?”

“No,” cried both heartily. “It only sounded so comical and so different from your ordinary way,” continued the younger man, “when you called my German friend a sausage.”

The professor’s face was so full of perplexity that in the reaction after the pain of the sudden good news, his friends began to laugh again, making the clever scientist turn his eyes inquiringly upon the doctor.

“Well, it’s a fact,” said the latter. “You did.”

“What!” cried the professor indignantly. “That I didn’t! I said that German gentleman was a fool.”

“No, no, no,” cried Frank, half hysterically. “You said sausage.”

“Frank, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, I do,” cried the young man. “Sausage, sausage, sausage.”

The professor drew lines horizontally across his forehead from his eyebrows to the roots of his hair, and shook his head slowly and piteously at the speaker.

“Well, really, Fred, old fellow,” said the doctor, “I must take Frank’s part. You certainly did say sausage. I suppose it was suggested by the common association of the two words, German sausage.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the professor slowly; “suppose then I must. German silver—German band—German tinder—German sausage. But I meant to say German gentleman, upon my word.”

“Nobody doubts you,” said Frank; “but why did you call him a fool?”

“Oh! for saying that Harry couldn’t escape. Do you both mean to tell me that an Englishman, and such an Englishman as our Harry Frere, couldn’t do what a German has done?”

“I don’t,” said the doctor, bringing his fist down upon the table. “Come, Franky, lad, what have you to say to that?”

“Hah!” sighed the young man sadly, “it is easily accounted for. My German friend managed to gain the confidence of the Khalifa from his knowledge of Arabic, and was freed from the chains he first wore. Poor Harry was wearing heavy irons up to the day when my new friend left.”

“Oh!” groaned the professor, “that’s bad, that’s bad. Frank, boy, I beg your German friend’s pardon. He isn’t a—”

“Sausage!” put in the doctor quickly.

“A fool,” said the professor, shaking his fist playfully at his old school-fellow. “Well, I feel ten years younger than I did half an hour ago, and this settles it at once.”

“Settles what?” said the doctor.

“Settles what!” cried the professor, in a tone full of mock disgust. “Hark at him, Frank! Settles this, sir,” he continued, flashing his fierce eyes upon the doctor, clenching his fist menacingly, and shaking his shaggy hair. “I’m off back to Egypt as soon as ever I can get a berth in a steamer, and then I’m going right up the country with tools in every pocket on purpose to file off those chains.”

“Bravo! bravo!” shouted the other two.

“An Englishman in chains,” continued the professor, gesticulating like an orator, though as a rule he was one of the quietest of men, “and of all Englishmen in the world, our Harry, the merriest school-fellow, the heartiest undergrad, and the truest friend!”

“And brother,” said Frank softly.

“Yes,” cried the professor excitedly, “and brother, that man ever had. The brother we three have mourned as dead for years, but who lives—as a slave.”

“Britons never shall be slaves,” cried the doctor solemnly.

“Never!” said Frank through his teeth, and with a look of stern determination in his eyes which meant more than words could have expressed.

“Never!” cried the professor, bringing his fist down with such a crash that this time a large goblet leaped off the table, was smashed upon the floor, and the next moment the door was thrown open and Sam, the doctor’s butler, as he called himself, looking white with anxiety, rushed into the room, to stand staring wildly from one to the other.

This quelled the professor’s excitement at once, and he dropped back in his chair and began mopping his face.

“What’s the matter, Samuel?” said the doctor sternly.

“That’s what I’ve come to see, sir,” cried the man piteously. “I did stop in the hall, sir, in aggynies, waiting to know. First in comes Mr Frank when I opens the door to him and hits me in the chest hard, just like a patient as has got rid of the strait w. Into the dining-room he bangs, before I could announce him, and without a bit o’ pollergy, slams the door after him. Then master goes into his consulting-room in a hurry and comes back with a something to exhibit, looking as he always do when there’s anything serious on; and ever since it’s been getting worse and worse, and you never rung for me, sir. Fancy my feelings, sir! First s’posing as it was fits with Mr Frank, sir; then it seemed to be you, sir; and then the professor went on, having it worse than either of you, sir, till it got to the smashing of my glass, and I couldn’t bear it no longer.”

“No, no, of course you couldn’t, Sam,” cried Frank; “and you must know at once. It’s news, Sam—glorious news—the best of news. My brother is alive after all!”

“What!” cried the man. “Mr Harry, sir?”

“Yes, alive, Sam—alive!”

“What, him as was dead, sir?”

“Yes, alive, I tell you.”

“What, him as was killed out in the Soudan—our Mr Harry, sir, as we give the dinner to in this very room, when he made that speech as I stood and heared to the very end?”

“Yes, Sam; yes, yes!” cried Frank, as excited now as the man, who now dashed at him and seized him by the hand and shook it with all his might.

“Then—then—then,” he cried. “Oh, Mr Frank—oh, Mr Frank—oh, Mr Frank!”

Dropping the young man’s hand, he seized the professor’s and shook at that for a few moments, before rushing at his master’s, to pump that wildly up and down before dashing to the door, flinging it open, and yelling—

“Here! hi! cook! Mary! everyone! He isn’t dead after all. Hooray! hooray! hoo—”

From a tremendous emphasis and sonorous roar over the first hurrah, Sam made a rapid diminuendo to the first syllable of the last, which trailed off and would have died away but for Frank, who, touched by the man’s show of devotion, finished it heartily, and led off with another cheer, in which the others joined, the shouts having an accompaniment in the pattering of feet upon the floor-cloth of the hall.

Sam’s fit of exaltation was over, and he stood shamefaced and troubled, wiping his damp hands upon the white napkin.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said humbly. “You see, I knowed Mr Harry so well. He was always such a gentleman to me, and it was such an upset when he died that—that now he’s come to life again, sir, it seemed like making a man forget himself, sir, and—”

“Show that he felt a genuine attachment to our very dear friend, Samuel,” said the doctor quietly. “Thank you. My friends thank you too, for we know it was all perfectly sincere.”

“Hah!” said the professor, as the door closed. “I always liked your Sam, though as a bit of a linguist I must say that sometimes his use of the Queen’s English does rather jar upon my feelings.”

“But his heart’s in the right place,” said Frank warmly.

“And a good heart too. But as we were saying when he burst into the room, Britons never shall be slaves, and I’m going back to Egypt after all to file off those chains.”

“That’s right,” said the doctor warmly, “and just what I knew you would say. You are a man, Fred, who has found out things that have puzzled a good many—”

“Better ones,” said the professor modestly. “Well, I have.”

“And you’ve made out many an Egyptian hieroglyphic in your time.”

“Yes, and I hope to find out more,” said the professor.

“And will,” cried Frank.

“But,” said the doctor, “you are forbidden to go up the country—by the English and Egyptian authorities; and the Soudan is in the power of a savage and cruel impostor, who vows death to the white. How are you going up there to use those files?”

“Hah!” said the professor gravely; “whenever I have a difficult problem to solve I always put on my old red fez and have a thorough good think, and then the way seems to come.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, while Frank listened eagerly to what was said, “but—”

“Yes, but—” said the professor, taking him up sharply. “We’ve got our news, thank Heaven! and that’s enough for to-night.”

“And you can’t put on your old red fez,” said Frank, “because—”

“Exactly,” said the professor; “because it is at my rooms in Fountain Court.”

Chapter Three.

Perfectly Sane.

“Good morning, Frank, my lad,” said Doctor Morris, shaking hands upon the young man entering his study. “Ready for business?”

“Ready, yes,” was the reply, made with feverish haste. “Am I late?”

“Late? No,” said the doctor, glancing at the clock on the study mantelpiece. “Half an hour before the time.”

“Oh, nonsense; that thing’s wrong. Ever so much slow.”

“Don’t you insult my clock, my boy,” said the doctor. “It keeps as good time as any one in London. It’s you who are too fast. Keep cool, my lad, keep cool.”

“Who can keep cool at a time like this?” said Frank impatiently.

“You, if you try. Surgeons have to. Important work requires cool heads.”

“I’ll try,” said Frank briefly.

“Fred Landon was right last night in putting matters off till this morning, so that we could all have a good night’s rest.”

Frank looked quickly up at his brother’s old school-fellow with something like envy, as he sat there softly stroking the great, dark brown beard, which flowed pretty well all over the breast of the heavy blue dressing-gown, tied with thick silk cords about his waist, and thought what a fine-looking specimen of humanity he was; while the doctor at the same time scanned the rather thin, anxious face before him and mused to himself—

“Poor Frank! the boy looks pulled down and careworn, and this has completely upset him. I must take him in hand a bit. He has been working too hard, too, over his chemistry.”

Just then their eyes met, and Frank coloured a little, as if self-conscious.

“I was afraid Landon would be here first,” he said hurriedly, “and that you would both be waiting for me.”

“You ought to have known him better,” said the doctor, laughing. “Fred Landon never is first at any meeting. I always allow him an hour’s latitude.”

“Oh, surely he will not be late this morning?” cried Frank anxiously.

“I hope not; but he may be. Of course he meant to be punctual, and I have no doubt he got up and breakfasted extra early; but anything takes off his attention—a book, a drawing, a note about Egypt—and he forgets everything else. You should have called in the Temple this morning and brought him on.”

“Of course! I didn’t think of that. Here, I’ll go and fetch him at once.”

“No, no; give him time. Perhaps he will have been thinking so seriously about poor Harry, that for once he will be punctual.”

“Here he is!” cried Frank excitedly, as a thundering knock was heard at the front door, and he sprang up in his anxiety to go and open to their friend himself.

“No, no; don’t do that,” cried the doctor, smiling. “Sam would be disgusted.”

“Oh, I can’t stop to think about Sam’s feelings now,” cried Frank hurriedly.

“But you must keep cool. Look here, Frank, you are eighteen, and pretty well a man grown.”

“What has that to do with it?” said the lad impatiently.

“Only this,” said the doctor gravely; “we want manly action now, and you are as impatient as a boy of twelve.”

At that moment the professor entered the room, hooked stick in hand, and with his hat on, closely followed by the doctor’s man, who stood with one hand held out and a puzzled look on his face, staring at the visitor, whose dress looked shabby and aspect wild, the want of what fashionable young men term “well grooming”—to wit, shaving, hair-cutting, and shampooing—making him appear ten years older than his real age.

“Good morning, dear boys,” he said, shaking hands warmly, and without taking off his hat. “Well, what is it?”

He turned sharply upon Sam as he spoke.

“Your hat, sir,” said the man hesitatingly.

“Well, what about it? It’s mine, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir; of course, sir. I thought you’d like me to take it and hang it up.”

“Then you thought wrong,” said the professor, and he so thoroughly stared Sam out of countenance, that the man shrank from the fierce frown and backed out of the room.

“Just as if a man can’t do as he likes with his own hat,” said the professor, with his face relaxing, as he crossed to one of the easy chairs, wheeled it forward, sat down, and then slipped off his hat, thrust his hand inside, whisked something out, and placed hat and stick under the table, before, with a good deal of flourish, he drew a very dingy-looking old scarlet fez over his starting black hair, with the big blue silk tassels hanging down behind, and settled himself comfortably by drawing up first one and then the other leg across and beneath him, à la turque.

“There,” he said, with a pleasant smile. “This chair isn’t so comfortable as the sand of the desert, but I must make it do. Now I’m ready for business. What’s the first thing to be done?”

“To make arrangements for your start at once,” said Frank sharply. “You will sail for Egypt, and make your preparations for going up the country, and I shall go with you.”

“Oh, you’ve settled that, have you?” said the professor, turning upon the speaker, and pulling the fez a little more tightly on, for his stiff hair had a disposition to thrust it off. “You two have been busy then, eh, Bob?”

“Certainly not,” said the doctor; “not a word has been said of this before.”

“That’s right,” said the professor. “Are you aware of what it will cost, Frank?”

“No. A good deal, no doubt; but I have all that money to come when I am of age, and there is Harry’s. There ought to be no difficulty about the executors advancing what is required.”

“Bob and your humble servant being the said executors,” said the professor. “Of course not; but I did not mean money, Frank, I meant life. It would cost yours.”

“Well, I am ready to spend it,” said the youth warmly, “so long as I can save my brother’s.”

“Hah!” sighed the doctor.

“That’s very nicely spoken, Frank,” said the professor, leaning forward to pat the young fellow on the arm, “but it’s all sentiment.”

“Sentiment?”

“Yes, and we want hard, matter-of-fact stuff. Now look at me.”

“Well, I am looking at you,” said Frank, half angrily.

“What do I look like?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Of course, my boy.”

“Well, you look like a Turk hard up in London, who has bought a second-hand suit of English clothes that don’t fit him.”

The doctor threw himself back and roared with laughter, while the professor joined silently in the mirth and then sat wiping his eyes, not in the least offended.

“Well done, Frank!” he said. “You’ve hit the bull’s-eye, boy. That’s exactly how I do look; and if I went to Cairo and put on a haïk and burnoose, and a few rolls of muslin round this fez, speaking Arabic as I do, and a couple of the Soudan dialects, I could go anywhere with a camel unquestioned. While as for you, my dear boy, you couldn’t go a mile. You’d be a Christian dog that every man would consider it his duty to kill.”

“I must risk that,” said Frank stubbornly.

“Must you?” said the professor. “What do you say, Bob?”

“I say it would be madness,” replied the doctor emphatically.

“Stick—stark—staring madness,” said the professor. “I, who have been out there for years, and who can be quite at home with the people, should have hard work to get through by the skin of my teeth.”

“And you would not get through, Frank,” said the doctor decisively. “This business must be carried out wisely and well.”

“What would you do, then,” said Frank impatiently.

“Make application to the Foreign Office at once. Diplomacy must be set to work, and failing that, force.”

“Oh!” cried Frank, in a despairing tone; “why, it would take years to get that slow machine to work, and all that time wasted in correspondence and question and answer, while poor Hal is slaving away yonder in chains! Oh, Morris, what are you thinking about?”

“Acting in the slower and surer way,” replied the doctor firmly. “This can only be done with coolness. We know that Hal is a prisoner out yonder, and we must apply to Government to get him free.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the professor.

“Hah!” cried Frank. “You don’t agree with this, Landon?”

“Of course not. Bob Morris is as clever a chap as any in London at cutting people to pieces and putting ’em together again; but over Egyptian matters he’d be like a baby. Mine is the plan.”

“To get your head cut off,” growled the doctor.

“Well, if I did,” retorted the professor, “that would beat you. Clever as you are, old chap, you couldn’t get that to grow again. Look here, Frank, you side with me. I’ll go at once.”

“And take me with you?”

“No, my boy, I—will—not,” said the professor decisively. “Be sensible, and take what is really the best way. I am not bragging when I say that I am one of the most likely men living to carry this business through.”

“Oh, we know that you are not bragging,” said the doctor. “You mean right; so does Frank. And now let me say this. The first thing last night that I thought, was that you, Fred, must go, and that I would go with you.”

“Impossible,” said the professor shortly.

“Yes, I thought it well over, and dearly as I long to go and help poor Hal, I am obliged to confess that it would be impossible.”

“Hear, hear,” said the professor; “just as impossible as for Frank to insist upon going with me to stick his head into the lion’s mouth, get it bitten off, and spoil my plans as well. Once more, it is impossible for either of you two to go; so be sensible and help me to get off, and trust me like a brother to help and save our brother in distress.”

“I will,” said the doctor firmly. “Now, Frank.”

“I won’t,” cried the youth.

“I ask you as a brother,” said the doctor.

“Yes, as a little brother—as a boy whom you look upon as wanting in manliness to help at a time like this. Both of you cry impossible. I’m much younger than either of you, but surely I’ve got some brains. Always up to now, and it was the same when poor old Hal was with us, you three treated me as if I was your equal, and it made me feel older. But now, when there is quite a crisis in my life, and I want to prove to you that young as I am I can be manly and help to save our poor Hal from the clutches of these savage Arab fiends with their cruelty and slavery, you combine to fight against me, and it is impossible—impossible.”

“Humph!” grunted the professor, shaking his head at the doctor, who shook his in turn.

“You talk too much, Frank, lad,” said the latter, in an injured tone. “Do be cool, and think a little. I’m sure you would see then that you are wrong. What we want in this is calm matter-of-fact planning.”

“No, we don’t,” said Frank impatiently; “we want a good plan, of course, but we want plenty of pluck and good manly dash. Impossible, you both say, because each of you has his own pet plan, one of you for Government interference, the other for going alone in disguise, and consequently you combine against me for one of you to carry out his.”

“Well, and if you cannot propose a better ought you not to give way to us?”

“No,” said Frank, “because it would be horrible to settle down here at home, thinking of that poor fellow’s sufferings. How do you think I could ever get on with any study? I should go out of my mind.”

“But look here, Frank,” said the doctor.

“I can’t look there,” said Frank. “I can’t reason with you two. I want to act; I want to be up and doing, so as to feel that every day I am a little nearer getting poor Harry free.”

“That’s quite reasonable, Bob,” said the professor, slowly and thoughtfully. “But I say, Franky, my boy, I don’t want to be obstinate; I don’t want to hinder you if you can suggest a better plan. We only say that so far your ideas are impossible. Come, now have you any other plan?”

“Yes,” said the lad excitedly. “Brother Hal is sitting out there in chains, looking longingly year after year for the help that does not come, and eating his poor heart out with despair because those to whom he should look for help do not come.”

“That’s all true enough,” said the doctor sadly.

“But the question is,” said the professor, holding out one hand and apparently putting down every word he said with the other: “How—are—we—to—help—the—poor—boy?”

“Let’s all three go,” said Frank hotly.

“Oh!” ejaculated the doctor.

“That’s more and more impossible still,” cried the professor.

“No, it isn’t,” cried Frank. “I have a plan in my head now that would answer if it were properly done. I haven’t been out in Egypt like Landon here, but ever since poor Hal got his appointment I’ve read up the country till I’m regularly soaked with it.”

“Can’t be,” said the professor, smiling grimly. “Moisture’s too scarce when you’re away from the Nile. You may be gritty with it.”

“Never mind about that,” said Frank. “I know one or two things about the people, and I know this—there is one man who is always welcome among them and their sufferers from fever and eye complaints and injured, and that is the doctor—the surgeon.”

“Eh?” ejaculated the professor sharply, looking up. “Yes, that’s true enough, boy.”

“Well,” said Frank, pointing, “there he is—the Hakim—the learned physician and curer of all ills. Look at him now in that dressing-gown, with his big, long beard, and that handsome, calm appearance. Doesn’t he look as if he could cure anything? Just suppose him sitting cross-legged in a tent now, with a big white turban on; what would he look like then?”

“An impostor!” cried the doctor angrily. “Frank, the good news has swollen your head up till it has cracked.”

“That it hasn’t,” cried the professor sharply, “and you would not look like an impostor, sir. Well done, Franky. I say he’d look like what he is—a splendid specimen of a man, and as good a doctor and surgeon as I know of. Impostor, indeed! I should be ready to punch the head of any scoundrel who dared to say so. Bravo, my boy! The great Frankish physician—the learned Hakim travelling through the country to perform his cures.”

“Yes,” cried Frank; “and performing them too.”

“To be sure,” said the professor, growing excited. “The news of his cures would spread through the land, and the people would welcome him, and he could go anywhere. Here, I say, Bob, this plant’s coming up.”

“You’re as bad as Frank,” said the doctor angrily. “You both take my breath away. What! me go masquerading through the Soudan, dressed up as a mock doctor?”

“Mock doctor be hanged!” cried the professor; “where’s the mockery? The people out there suffer by scores and thousands from eye complaints and other evils, and as to the number you meet with who have been chopped and speared and shot—why, the place teems with them. Couldn’t you do them good?”

“Well, of course I could,” said the doctor thoughtfully. “I should say that with antiseptic treatment one’s cures would seem almost marvellous to the poor wretches.”

“Of course they would. I doctored scores myself when I was out there,” said the professor. “Now, look here; I mean to go out there, of course, and I shall take you with me, Bob.”

“What!”

“No whatting. You’ve got to go; that’s settled. You’re the great Frankish Hakim, and I’m your interpreter. You can’t speak a word of Arabic. There’s no imposture in that, is there?”

“Oh, no; I can’t speak a word of Arabic, but as to the doctoring—”

“Look here, Bob; you’d be doing these people good, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then, there’s no imposture there. We’ll go right up to Khartoum, together with our servants, and get the poor boy away. That’s settled, so you had better lay in your stock of ointment-pots, bottles, plaisters, and pills.”

“Well, I’m beginning to think I’m dreaming,” said the doctor.

“But you are not,” said the professor, and he turned to Frank, who was excitedly listening to all that was said. “Now then, my boy,” he said, “we’ve settled that; but I can’t see that by any possibility you could come with us.”

“I can,” said the lad eagerly. “You talked about having servants with you.”

“Yes, blacks,” said the professor. “It would not do to take white ones.”

“Very well, then, I’ll go as a black.”

The doctor and the professor turned upon the speaker sharply, and fixed him with their eyes, as if doubtful about the state of his mind, gazing at him in silence, till he laughed merrily.

“I have not lost a slate or tile,” he said. “I am quite what Morris calls compos mentis.”

“No,” said the doctor sharply; “I’ll be hanged if you can be, Frank, my lad.”

“And so say I,” chimed in the professor. “How in the world can you go as a black?”

“Bah!” cried Frank.

“What does Baa! mean?” said the professor. “Black sheep?”

“Nonsense! Ask Morris if it would not be as easy as easy to tinge one’s skin to any depth, from a soft brown to black.”

“Won’t do,” said the professor. “You’d dye your face, neck, and arms, and some time or other you’d be caught bathing.”

“Not much chance for bathing out there when we were away from the Nile, eh?”

“Well, having a sand-bath; and then they’d see that the rest of your skin was white.”

“Oh, no, they wouldn’t,” cried Frank. “I should do as that amateur did who wanted to play Othello properly—black myself all over.”

The professor took off his fez, laid it upon his knees, and with both hands gave his shaggy hair a vicious rub, which, however, did not disorder it in the least, seeing that it was as rough as could be before.

“Yes,” said the doctor; “he has an answer for all objections, Fred, old fellow.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” cried the professor, putting on his fez again, and making a vicious dab at the tassel, which was tickling his neck, but subsided quietly between his shoulders after it had done swinging. “He has something to say to everything. Too much talk. It wouldn’t do. The Baggara are as keen as their swords: they’d see through it directly.”

“Then I’d dye it blacker,” said Frank.

“Oh, the colour would be right enough, boy,” cried the professor, “but that’s what would let the cat out of the bag.”

“What do you mean?”

“That tongue of yours, my lad. Your speech would betray you directly.”

“Oh, no, it would not,” said Frank. “Mutes are common enough in the East, are they not?”

“Oh, yes, but—”

“Well, I would not talk.”

“Pooh!” cried the professor contemptuously. “You wouldn’t talk? Why, you’ve got a tongue as long as a girl’s. You not talk? Why, you’d be sure to burst out with something in plain English just when our lives were depending upon your silence.”

“Urrr!” growled the young fellow angrily. “Give me credit for a little more common-sense. Do you think, with the success of our expedition and poor Hal’s life and happiness at stake, I couldn’t make a vow to preserve silence for so many months, and keep it?”

“I do think so,” said the professor, clapping one hand down upon the other. “You would find it impossible. What do you say, Bob?”

“Humph!” grunted the doctor.

“Come, there’s no need for you to hold your tongue,” cried the professor petulantly. “Say something.”

“Very well, I’ll say something,” replied the doctor: “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You know it’s impossible.”

“No,” said the doctor thoughtfully; “I know it would be very hard, but seeing what a stubborn, determined fellow Frank is, I should not be surprised if he succeeded.”

“Hurrah!” cried Frank. “There, Landon.”

“Bob ought to know better,” cried the professor. “It’s impossible—that’s impossible—the whole business is impossible. Can’t be done.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the doctor, taking both hands to his beard and stroking and spreading it out over his breast, where it lay in crisp curls, glistening with many lights and giving him a very noble and venerable aspect. “I’m beginning to like that idea of going as a learned physician.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right enough,” said the professor. “There’s no imposition there. The Arabs would have nothing to find out, and their suspicions would be allayed at once. Then, too, you could humbug them grandly with a few of your modern doctors’ tools—one of those double-barrelled stethoscopes, for instance; or a clinical thermometer.”

“To be sure,” cried Frank. “Modern Magic—good medicine for the unbelieving savages. An electric battery, too; and look here, both of you: the Röntgen rays.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the doctor, and making his beard wag with enjoyment. “Yes, that would startle them. White man’s magic. Fancy, Fred, old chap, a wounded man with a bullet in him, and I at work with my black slave, Frank, here, to help me, in a dark tent, while I made the poor wretch transparent to find out where the bullet lay.”

“Yes, or broken spear-head,” said the professor eagerly. “I say, Bob, there’d be no gammon over that: the savage beggars would believe that they had a real live magician come amongst them then.”

“Yes, ha, ha! wouldn’t they? I say, old fellow, I’m beginning to think it ought to be worked.”

“Worked, yes,” cried Frank excitedly. “I could take a few odds and ends from my laboratory, too, so as to show them some beautiful experiments—fire burning under water, throwing potassium on the river to make it blaze; use some phosphorescent oil; and startle them with Lycopodium dust in the air; or a little fulminating mercury or silver.”

“H’m, yes, you might,” said the professor thoughtfully. “You could both of you astonish them pretty well, and all that would keep up your character.”

“But of course it’s all impossible, isn’t it?” said Frank, smiling.

“H’m! I don’t quite know,” said the professor slowly.

“Look here,” said the doctor rising, to seat himself upon one end of the hearthrug, where he began trying to drag his legs across into a comfortable sitting position, but failed dismally; “I’m afraid I should never manage this part of the business. My joints have grown too stiff.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said the professor sharply; “it only wants a little practice. Look here.”

He plumped himself down upon the other end of the hearthrug quite in the native manner, and seemed perfectly at his ease, while Frank sat watching them both with his eyes twinkling in his delight.

“You can’t do it in those tight trousers. You want good loose, baggy breeches, knickerbockery sort of things. Oh, you’d soon do it.—That’s better.”

“Yes,” said the doctor dubiously; “that’s a little better; but these trousers are, as you say, too tight. I tell you what I’d do, Frank,” he continued, perfectly seriously, “I’d have my head shaved clean, and keep it so.”

“Bravo!” cried the professor excitedly. “Splendid! Your bald head over that grand beard and a very large white turban of the finest Eastern muslin, twisted up as I could twist it for you, would give just the finishing touches. Just spread the skirts of that dressing-gown a little.”

Frank sprang to the task, and in arranging the folds uncovered one of the yellow Morocco slippers the doctor happened to be wearing.

“That’s good,” cried the professor excitedly. “Fetch those sofa cushions, Frank, and put them so that he can rest his arm upon them. Good! Now a pipe. Here, fish out my stick from under the table. That’s right,” he continued, as Frank placed the stick upside down in the doctor’s hand, with the ferrule near his lips and the hook resting on the floor, turned up like a bowl.

“Well, I am!” cried the professor, drawing his legs more under him, and nodding at his old school-fellow seated opposite at the other end of the hearthrug. “Franky, boy, he looks the very perfection of a Turkish doctor now, while with the real things on and his head shaved, and the turban— Oh, I haven’t a doubt of it, he’d humbug the Mahdi himself if he were alive. I haven’t a bit of fear about him. Sit still, old man.—As for myself, I should be all right; when I get out there I feel more of a native than an Englishman. It’s you who are the trouble, Franky, for I confess I am coming round.”

“I shall get myself up perfectly. You may depend upon that,” said the lad confidently, “and all through the voyage out Morris will coach me up about bandaging and helping him in ambulance work, so that I may get to be a bit clever as his assistant.”

“Yes, yes, yes, that’s all right,” said the professor impatiently. “It’s not that which bothers me. Look at Bob. I can see him in his part exactly. Nothing could be better; but I can’t see you at all.”

“Why? Set your imagination to work.”

“I am, my dear boy; I am. It’s working till my brain’s beginning to throb; but I can’t see you, as I say.”

“But why not?”

“No shape; no form. You’re too skinny. A young nigger ought to be plump, and shine like butter.”

“Well, I’ll oil myself,” said Frank, laughing as much at himself as at the doctor seated à la Turque so solemnly upon the hearthrug.

“But your hair, Frank, my boy. It’s brown and streaky. It ought to curl up more tightly than Bob’s beard.”

“I’ll put it in paper every night, and dye it at the same time as I do my skin.”

“H’m! Well, perhaps we might work it that way. If we can’t, we must shave your head too.”

“Barkis is willin’,” said the young man readily. “As to the sitting—look here: won’t this do?”

He seized the tongs from the fender, took a live coal from between the bars, dropped down sitting upon his heels halfway between the pair, but outside the hearthrug, and completed the Eastern picture in Wimpole Street by resting upon his left hand and making believe to be holding the live coal to the bowl of the Hakim’s pipe.

“Bravo! Splendid!” cried the professor. “A tableau vivant, only wanting in colour and clothes to be perfect in all its details, and then—”

And then the group remained speechless in horror and disgust, for they suddenly became aware of the fact that Sam had silently entered with a letter upon a silver waiter, and had stopped short close to the door, to stand staring in astonishment at the living picture spread before his eyes. These seemed starting, while his brow was lined, the rest of his face puckered, and his mouth opened, at the same time his muscles relaxing so that the silver waiter dropped a little and the letter fell upon the soft carpet with a light pat which in the silence sounded loud.

Chapter Four.

The New Recruit.

For a few moments the picture was at its best, actors and spectator looking as rigid as if carved in wood or stone.

Then all was over, the doctor dropping the stick and scrambling up; Frank putting the tongs into the fender, Sam stooping to pick up the letter from the carpet, and the professor tearing his fez off his head, to dash it on the floor.

“Hang it!” he cried angrily; “destroyed the illusion! There, it’s all over, Frank. I can’t see it now.”

“Beg pardon, sir. Letter, sir,” said Sam stiffly, and he was as rigid as a drill sergeant, and his face like wood in its absence of all expression, as he stared hard over the waiter at his master, whose fingers trembled and cheeks coloured a little as he took the missive.

“Ahem!” said the doctor uneasily, and Sam, who was about to wheel about and leave the room, stood fast. “A—er—er—a little experiment, Samuel,” he continued.

“Yes, sir,” said the man quietly.

“Er—errum—Samuel,” said the doctor; “the fact is, I—er—we—er—we do not wish this—that you have seen just now—talked about downstairs.”

“Suttonly not! sir,” said the man sharply, though the moment before he had been chuckling to himself about how he would make cook laugh about the games being carried on in the study.

“Thank you, Samuel,” said the doctor, clearing his throat and gaining confidence as he went on. “The fact is, Samuel, a confidential servant ought to be trustworthy.”

“Suttonly, sir,” said Sam.

“And hear, see, and—”

“Say nothing, sir, of course. You may depend upon me, sir.”

“Thank you, Samuel. Well, after what you heard last night you will not be surprised that we have decided to go out to Egypt at once in search of Mr Harry Frere.”

“Not a bit, sir. Just what I should expect.”

“Exactly, Samuel. To go up the country means, you see, the necessity of dressing ourselves like the people out there.”

“Yes, sir; much better for the climate.”

“And that is why we were, so to speak, going through a little practice.”

“Suttonly, sir. Quite right. And about luggage, sir. What shall I get ready?”

“Ah! That requires a little consideration, Samuel. I’ll go into that with you by and by.”

“Very good, sir. But I should like to ask one question.”

“Certainly, Samuel,” said the doctor gravely; “what is it?”

“Only this, sir. When do we start?”

“When do we start?” said the doctor, staring. “My good man, I did not propose to take you.”

“Not take me, sir?” cried the butler, staring. “Why, whatever do you think you could do without me?”

The doctor stared blankly at his man, and then turned to the professor.

“Ah! No hesitation, Morris,” said the latter sharply. “I haven’t quite come round yet regarding both of you, though matters have altered me a good deal during the last five minutes; but with regard to this last phase—the idea of taking your servant—that really is quite out of the question.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Sam seriously; “I don’t think that it would be right for master to think of going without me.”

“Well, Samuel, I must own,” said the doctor thoughtfully, “I should miss your services very much.”

“You couldn’t do it without me, sir,” said the man sternly. “I shouldn’t like you to attempt it.”

“Look here, Doctor Morris,” said the professor angrily, “do you allow your servant to dictate to you like this?”

“Well, you see,” said the doctor, “Samuel has always been such a good, attentive fellow, and taken so much interest in his work, Landon, that I feel rather puzzled as to whether this is dictation or no.”

“It aren’t, sir, really,” cried Sam appealingly. “Is it, Mr Frank?”

“Well, no, I don’t think it is,” said the young man. “I take it that Sam is only anxious to go on waiting upon his master.”

“That’s it, sir. Thankye, Mr Frank. That’s it, but it ain’t all. If you three gentlemen are going on your travels to find and bring back Mr Harry, it seemed to me that I’m just the sort o’ man as would be useful. I don’t want to make out as I’m a dabster at any one thing, gentlemen, but there ain’t many things I shouldn’t be ready to have a try at, from catching one’s dinner to cooking it, or from sewing on buttons to making a shoe.”

“Look here, Sam, you can shave, I know,” said Frank, “for you’ve shaved me several times.”

“Well, sir,” said the man, with a queer cock of the eye, “I’ve soaped and lathered your chin, and I’ve run a razor over your face, but I don’t think I found anything to scrape off.”

“I call that mean,” cried Frank; “just when I was putting in a word for you. I’m sure there was a little down on my upper lip and chin.”

“Oh, yes, sir, just as if you had had a touch with a sooty finger; but down don’t count with me in shaving; it’s what comes up bristly and strong.”

“Well, leave my beard alone,” said Frank. “Look here, could you shave a man’s head?”

“Ask master, sir,” said the butler with a grin, and Frank turned to his brother’s old companion.

“Oh, yes, he has shaved the heads of patients for me several times,” said the doctor. “He’s very clever at that.”

“I say, Professor Landon,” said Frank, turning to him, “do you hear this? The Hakim ought to have his barber, and you know what important folk they are in the East.”

“Humph! Yes,” said the professor thoughtfully; “there is something in that. Barbers have become grand viziers, and in such shaving countries a barber is held in high respect. He would be all right there. But no, no, I cannot be weak over so vital a thing as this. Just think, you two, of the consequences if through some inept act on his part he should ruin all our prospects.”

“Me, sir?” cried Sam excitedly; “me ruin your prospects by committing that there act as you said! I wouldn’t do it for any money. Take a oath before a magistrate or a judge that I wouldn’t I don’t even know what it is.”

“Oh, you’d do your best, I believe, Sam,” said the professor.

“I’m glad you do, sir,” said the man, who was almost whimpering. “It sounds hard on an old servant to be thought likely to do what you said.”

“But look here, my lad; we ought to do all that is wanted for ourselves, excepting such little jobs as we could set the Arabs to do.”

“Arabs, sir? The Arabs!” cried Sam. “Oh, I don’t think much of them. I’ve seen ’em. That lot as come over to London seven years ago. Bed-ridden Arabs they call theirselves. They could tumble head over heels, and fire off guns when they were in the air; but you gentlemen want a good honest English servant, not a street tumbler and accryback.”

“Tut, tut, tut! listen to me,” said the professor. “Do you know what the desert is like?”

“Can’t say I know much about it, sir, only what I read in Mungo Park’s travels. Deal o’ sand, ain’t there?”

“Yes,” said the professor, “there is a deal of sand there, and no houses, no butlers’ pantries, no kitchens.”

“Well, sir, if I made up a box with half a knifeboard for a lid, and my bottle o’ blacking, my brushes, and a leather or two and the rouge for my plate, I daresay I could get on.”

“Bah-h-h-h!” snarled the professor. “Why didn’t you add a big stone filter, a plate-rack, and a kitchen boiler? My good man, you’re impossible.”

“I ain’t, sir, ’pon my word. You mean I should have to make more of a shift. Well, of course I would.”

“Look here, then, I grant that you can shave. You can make a fire, boil water, and cook?”

“Can I, sir?” cried the man scornfully. “I should think I can!”

“Can you cook kabobs?”

“What’s them, sir—Egyptian vegetables?”

“Vegetables! Hark at him! Did you ever hear of Kous-kous?”

“Can’t say I ever did, sir; but look here, I’ll buy ‘Cookery for the Million,’ and I’ll soon learn.”

“Oh, you’re improving!” said the professor sarcastically. “Here, I’ll try you on something else. Could you ride and drive a camel?”

“What, one of them wobbly, humpy things at the Zoo? I never tried, sir, but I’ve seen the children have rides on them. I could soon manage one o’ them, sir. I’d try an elephant if it came to that.”

The professor shook his head disparagingly, and Sam gave Frank and his master an imploring look, which made the former take his part. “Look here, professor,” he said quietly; “really I think it might be managed,” and Sam’s long face shortened.

“Managed! Do you think we shall do what we propose if you and Morris take your valets?”

“There is going to be a black slave in the party,” said Frank, “and I do not see why the Hakim should not have a barber who is a white slave.”

“Humph!” ejaculated the professor, in a regular camel-like grunt, and he set up his back after the manner of that animal.

“Would you mind going as a slave, Sam?” asked Frank—“the Hakim’s slave?”

“Not a bit, sir, so long as Mr Hakim’s going to be one of the party. Me mind being a slave? Not I. Ain’t Mr Harry one pro tempenny? I’m willing, sir, willing for anything. I don’t want no wages. I want to go.”

“And you shall go, Samuel,” said the doctor firmly. “I’ll talk the matter over with Mr Landon.”

“Thankye, sir, thankye,” cried the man joyfully. “And I beg your pardon, Mr Landon, sir; don’t you take against me because it’s going against you. I’m willing to do any manner of things to make you gentlemen comfortable all the time.”

“I believe you, Sam,” said the professor. “There, I give way.”

“Thankye kindly, sir!” cried the man excitedly.

“But look here. It is only due to him that he should be told that we are going upon a very dangerous expedition. We shall have to travel amongst people who would think it a meritorious action to cut our throats if they had the merest suspicion that we were going to try and rescue Mr Harry Frere. Then we shall have the risks of fever, dying from thirst, perhaps from hunger, and as likely as not being taken prisoners ourselves and made slaves—are you listening, Sam?”

“Hearing every word, sir. But I say, sir, is it as bad as that?”

“Honestly, my man,” said the professor solemnly; “it is all that and worse, because we shall have to cut ourselves adrift from all Government protection and trust to our own wits. Now then, my man, do not hesitate for an instant—if you feel that you cannot cheerfully put up with peril and danger, and dare every risk, say so at once, for you will be doing your master a good turn as well as us.”

“Are you gentlemen going to chance it all?” said Sam quietly.

“Certainly.”

“All right, gentlemen, then so am I, and as soon as ever you like.”

“Hah!” ejaculated Frank, who had been watching the play of the man’s countenance anxiously, and he crossed to Sam and shook his hand, making the butler’s face glow with pride and pleasure combined.

“Now then,” said the professor, “one more word, Sam. It is of vital importance that you keep all this a profound secret. From this hour you know nothing except that you are the Hakim’s servant till we have left Cairo. After that you are the Hakim’s slave, and you hold him in awe.”

“Of course, sir,” said Sam, with his face wrinkling with perplexity. “I’ll hold him in anything you like. I won’t say a word to a soul. I won’t know anything, and I hope Mr Hakim will be as satisfied with me as master has always been.”

“And you think I have always been satisfied with you, Samuel?” said the doctor, smiling pleasantly.

“I think so, sir,” replied the man. “I’ve been some years in your service, and you’re a gentleman as will always have everything done as it should be.”

“Of course.”

“And you never found fault with me yet. And I will say that a better mas—”

“No, you will not,” said the doctor quickly. “That will do.”

“Certainly, sir,” said the man, looking abashed.

“You like the doctor as a master, then?” said Frank, with a twinkle of the eye.

“Like him, sir!” cried Sam.

“Well, I think you will like your new master quite as well.”

“I hope so, sir. I’ll do my best. Shall I see him soon?”

“Of course,” said Frank. “There he is. The Hakim, Doctor Morris—the learned surgeon who is going to practise through the Soudan.”

“Oh-h-h!” cried Sam, with his face lighting up. “I see now, gentlemen.”

“But remember,” said the doctor sternly, “the necessity for silence has begun, so keep your own counsel, which will be keeping ours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now go and begin putting together the few things you will require on our voyage and journey.”

“Remembering,” said the professor, “that we must take only the simplest necessaries. I shall have to overhaul every man’s bag after you have brought it down to the lowest state. There, Sam, I agree to your going fully, for I believe you will not let us repent it.”

“Thank you, sir. Shall we go soon?”

“Within forty-eight 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 their attachment, and do all I wish for shekels, Franky, all for shekels.”

“But can you trust them?” said Frank.

“Certainly. They will keep faith, and be ready even to fight for us if the odds are not too great, and the shekels are duly paid. There, I don’t think we need trouble about anything more, after the two leather cases are packed with the conjuring tricks and physic of the learned Hakim and his slaves. The sinews of war will do the rest. Hah! I am glad we are going into the desert once again. We must get to Hal as soon as possible, and somehow scheme to get him free, but you must curb your impatience. It will be all express till we reach Cairo—all the end of the nineteenth century; but once we are there, excepting for the civilisation of that modern city we shall have gone back to the times of the Arabian Nights and find the country and the people’s ways unchanged. And do you know what that means?”

“Pretty well,” said Frank; “crawling at a foot’s pace when one wants to fly.”

“That’s it; just as fast as a camel will walk.”

Those hours of preparation passed more quickly to Frank than any that he could recall during his busy young life, and over and over again he despaired of the party being ready in time, so that he could hardly believe it when the carriage-door was slammed, the whistle sounded, and the train glided out of the London terminus with the question being mentally asked, Shall we ever see the old place again?

Then sleepless nights and drowsy days, as the party sped through France and Switzerland, dived through the great tunnel, to flash out into light in sunny Italy, and then on and on south, with the rattle of the train forming itself into a constant repetition of two words, which had been yelled in the tunnel and echoed from the rocky walls of the deep cutting—always the same: “Save Harry! Save Harry!” till Frank’s brain throbbed.

Then Brindisi, with the mails being hurried from the train to the noble steamer waiting to plough the Mediterranean and bear the adventurers south and east for the land of mystery with its wonders of a bygone civilisation buried deeply in the ever-preserving sand.

And now for the first time Frank’s brain began to be at rest from the hurry of the start, as he lay back half asleep in the hot sunshine, watching the surface of the blue Mediterranean and the soft, silvery clouds overhead, while the doctor and the professor sat in deck-chairs, reading or comparing notes, but all three resting so as to be ready for the work in hand.

It was one glorious evening when Frank was leaning over the side gazing forward towards the land that they were soon to reach, and where they would give up the inert life they were leading for one of wild and stirring adventure, that the young man suddenly started out of his dreamy musings, for a voice behind him said softly—

“Beg pardon, sir.” Frank turned sharply round. “Don’t mind me speaking, sir, I hope?”

“No, Sam,” said Frank, rousing himself and speaking in a tone which plainly suggested, “Go on.”

“Thankye, sir. Don’t seem to have had a chance to speak to you in all this rumble tumble sort of look-sharp-or-you’ll-be-left-behind time.”

“No, we haven’t seen much of one another, Sam.”

“We ain’t, sir, and I don’t know as I’ve wanted to talk much, for it’s took all my time to think and make out whether it’s all true.”

“All true?”

“Yes, sir. Seems to me as if I’m going to wake up directly to find I’ve been having a nap in my pantry in Wimpole Street.”

“Hah! It has been a rush, Sam.”

“Rush, sir? It’s wonderful. Seems only yesterday we were packing up, and now here we are—down here on the map. One of the sailors put his finger—here it is, sir, signed Jack Tar, his mark, for it was one of the English sailors, not one of the Lascar chaps. That’s where we are, sir.”

Sam held up a conveniently folded map, surely enough marked by the tip of a perspiring finger.

“He says we shall be in port to-morrow, and have to shift on to the rail again, and in a few hours be in Cairo on the River Nile.”

“That’s quite correct, Sam,” said Frank, smiling; “and then our work will begin.”

“And a good job too, sir; I want to be at it. But my word! it seems wonderful. Me only the other day in my pantry, Wimpole Street, W., and to-morrow in King Pharaoh’s city where there were the plagues and pyramids.”

“And now hotels and electric lights, and the telegraph to communicate with home.”

“Yes, sir, it’s alarming,” said Sam. “Pity it don’t go right up to Khartoum—that’s the place, ain’t it, sir?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“So as we could send a message to Mr Harry: ‘Keep up your spirits; we’re on the way.’”

“Ah, if we could, Sam!” said Frank, with a sigh.

“Never mind, sir; we’re not losing much time. But who’d ever think it! I used to fancy that foreign abroad would look foreign, but it don’t a bit. Here’s the sea and the sky looking just as it does off the Isle o’ Wight when you’re out o’ sight o’ land; and only when we saw the mountains with a morsel of snow on their tops did the land look different to at home. I suppose it will be a bit strange in Egypt, though, sir, won’t it?”

“Oh, yes. Wait a few hours longer,” said Frank, “and then you’ll see.”

Sam came to him the next night when they were settled in the European hotel, where the professor was welcomed as an old friend.

“I’ve put out all you’ll want, sir,” said the man. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“No, Sam; I’m just going to bed so as to have a good night’s rest ready for work to-morrow. Well, does this seem foreign?”

“Foreign, sir? Hullo! there’s another of ’em.”—Slap.—“Missed him again! Have they been at you yet, sir?”

“What, the mosquitoes? Yes. I just brushed one off.”

“They seem to fancy me, sir. I expected they’d be great big things, but they’re only just like our gnats at home.”

“Indeed! What about their bite!”

“Oh, yes, they bite sharper, sir. I expect it’s because they’re so precious hungry, sir. But foreign? Oh, yes, this’ll do, sir. It’s wonderful, what with the camels and the donkeys. My word! they are fine ’uns. I saw one go along cantering like a horse. Yes, sir, this’ll do. But I suppose we’re not going to stay here long?”

“Only till the professor can make his preparations for the start, and then we’re off right away into the desert.”

“Right, sir; on donkeys?”

“On camels, Sam.”

“H’m! Seems rather high up in the air, sir. Good way to fall on to a hard road.”

“Road—hard road, Sam?” said Frank laughing. “If you fall it will be on to soft sand. There are no roads in the desert.”

“No roads, sir? You mean no well-made roads.”

“I mean no roads at all; not even a track, for the drifting sand soon hides the last foot-prints.”

Sam stared.

“Why, how do you find your way, sir?” said Sam, staring blankly.

“Either by the compass, as one would at sea, or by trusting to the Arabs, who know the landmarks.”

“And sometimes by the camels’ bones,” said the professor, who had entered the room unheard. “Plenty of them die along the caravan tracks. But I daresay we shall find our way, for there is the big river which marks our course pretty well, if we were at fault.”

“Thankye, sir; you’d be sure to know,” said Sam hurriedly. “I was only asking Mr Frank like so as to pick up a little about the place.”

The man asked no more questions, but made the best of his way to his own room.

“Come down and out into the grounds, my lad,” said the professor. “The doctor’s sitting in the garden having his cigar.”

“I was just going to bed.”

“Yes, but come with me for an hour first. I’ve an old friend waiting to see me, and I thought I’d bring you down.”

“I don’t want to meet his old friends,” thought Frank impatiently. Then aloud, as he followed: “Of course you will say nothing about the object of our visit here?”

“Trust me,” said the professor quietly.

“Is your friend staying here?”

“Yes; he comes here regularly at this time of year, expecting to meet old visitors to Egypt.”

“I see,” said Frank drily. Then to himself, “I wish he was at Jericho. I can’t talk about anything now but the desert.”

As they descended into the prettily lit-up hall and went out into the garden among the palm trees, the scene was attractive enough to fix any newcomer’s eyes; but Frank could see nothing but a long wide stretch of desert country, at the horizon of which were a few palms overshadowing dingy, sun-baked mud buildings, houses formed of the brick made of straw now as in the days when the taskmaster-beaten Israelitish bondmen put up such pitiful plaint.

“Where is the doctor?” said Frank.

“Over yonder on that seat,” replied the professor, as they were going down a sandy path towards a group of palms. “Ah, there’s my friend.”

Frank looked in the indicated direction, but he saw no English visitor. There was a stately looking turbaned figure, draped in white, standing in the dim shadowy light among the palms, and he seemed to catch sight of them at the same moment, and came softly forward, to stop short and make a low obeisance to each in turn.

“Well, Ibrahim, how are you?” said the professor sharply.

“His Excellency’s servant is well and happy now, for his soul rejoices to find that the dogs told lies. They said his Excellency would not come to El Caire until the war was over, and the Mahdi’s successor—may his fathers’ graves be defiled—had gone back to the other dogs of the far desert.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve come again. Frank, this is Sheikh Ibrahim, of the Dhur Tribe. And look here, Ibrahim, this is my friend and brother, Mr Frank Frere.”

“And my master,” said the Arab, with another grave and dignified reverence, speaking too, in spite of the flowery Eastern ornamentation, in excellent English. “His Excellency has come, then, to continue his search for the remains of the old people?”

“Hah!” cried the professor, “that’s right. Now let’s understand one another at once. No, Ibrahim, I have not.”

“Not come, Excellency?” cried the Sheikh, in a disappointed tone, and his hands flew up to his long flowing grey beard, but he did not tear it, contenting himself with giving two slight tugs.

“No, not come to explore.”

“But, your Excellency, I and my people have found a fresh temple with tombs, and deep in the sand where no one has been before.”

“Yes, and you know too that the authorities have given strict orders that no expeditions are to be made right out in the desert on account of the danger?”

“It is true, O Excellency,” said the Arab, with a sigh, “and I and mine will starve. We had better have been driving our sheep and goats here and there for pasture far away yonder, than waiting for English travellers. All who are here go up the river in boats. There are no journeys into the wilds this year. I have been stopped twice.”

Frank glanced at the professor, and saw that his eyes were glittering as he spoke in a low tone.

“Yes, Sheikh,” he said; “it is very ill for you, and it is bad for me. There are those stones cut into and painted that we left buried in the sand.”

“Yes, Excellency; hidden safely away, waiting for your servants to dig them out. Why not let me gather my people and let us go so many days’ journey out into the wilderness and carry them off, before some other learned traveller to whose eyes all the mysteries of the past are like an open book shall come and find them?”

“That would be bad, Ibrahim,” said the professor slowly.

“It would break thy servant’s heart, Excellency,” said the man. “Look here, Excellency. It is forbidden, but my people are away there to the south with the tents and camels, and their Excellencies might come and dwell with us in the tents for days, and then some night the camels would be ready—the poor beasts are sobbing and groaning for burdens to bear and long journeys into the desert—and some moonlight night they might be loaded with their sacks of grain and skins of water, and no one would know when we stole away into the desert to where the old tombs are hidden. Then the treasures could be found and brought away by his Excellency’s servants, who would rejoice after and have the wherewithal to buy oil and honey, dhurra and dates, so that their faces might shine and the starving camels grow sleek and fat upon his Excellency’s bounty.”

“Ah,” said the professor slowly and dubiously, as Frank listened with his heart beating fast, while he held his quivering nether lip pressed tightly by his teeth; “you think that would be possible, Sheikh?”

“Possible, your Excellency?” said the man, in an earnest whisper; “why not? Am I a man to boast and say ‘I will do this,’ and then show that I have a heart of water, and do it not?”

“No,” said the professor slowly; “Sheikh Ibrahim has always been a man in whom my soul could trust, in the shadow of whose tent I have always lain down and slept in peace, for I have felt that his young men were ready with their spears to protect me, and that their father looked upon me as his sacred charge.”

“Hah!” said the Sheikh, with calm, grave dignity. “They are the words of truth. His Excellency trusts me as he has always done. Will he come, then, into the desert once again? If he says yes, Ibrahim will go away to-night with gladsome heart to the village close by, and there will be joy in the hearts of his two young men, who are waiting sorrowfully there.”

“You know the desert well, Ibrahim,” said the professor slowly.

“It is my home, Excellency. My eyes opened upon it first, and when the time comes they will look upon it for the last time, and I shall sleep beneath its sands.”

“Yes, as a patriarchal Sheikh should,” said the professor. “But you and your young men are quite free from engagements?”

“Ready to be thy servants, to do thy bidding, for no one wants us now; go where you will choose, and work and dig, and find as they have found before.”

“It is good,” said the professor gravely. “Of course I shall pay you well.”

“His Excellency always did pay us well,” said the Arab, bending low.

“And my two friends will add to the payment.”

The Arab smiled.

“You will keep our departure quite private, Ibrahim—no one is to know.”

The man shook his head.

“And I should want you to lead us wherever I chose to go.”

“You always did, Excellency.”

“But suppose I wanted you to go where some of your people—I mean men of your race—would consider it dangerous?”

“There are Arabs of some tribes, Excellency, who are of low breed—men who are not of the pure blood, who would say the way was dangerous: the men of my tribe, the Dhur, do not know that word. If they said they would take the English learned one, they would take him. They have their spears and their guns and swords, and their camels are swift. Is not that enough, O Excellency?”

“Quite,” said the professor; “but there would be danger, perhaps, for the Mahdi’s followers range far.”

“True, my lord, and they are many. Mine are but as a handful of sand. His Excellency would not go to fight the Khalifa? It would be mad.”

“A wise man can fight with cunning, and do more than a strong man with his sword and spear.”

The Sheikh was silent, and stood in the semi-darkness with his eyes reflecting the lights of the hotel strangely, as he glanced from one to the other as if trying to read their faces.

“I shall have to tell him all, Frank,” said the professor slowly, in Latin.

“The risk is too great,” replied Frank hurriedly. “We should be putting ourselves in his power, and if he is not true he would destroy all our hopes.”

“We can go no further without his help, Frank,” said the professor gravely. “Tace.”

“His Excellency’s words are dark,” said the Sheikh, in a low, deep voice. “He speaks of dangers, and of the Mahdi’s men, and of fighting with cunning. Will he not fully trust his servant, and make his words and wishes shine with the light of day? Does his Excellency wish to play the spy upon the new Mahdi’s movements?”

“No,” said the professor firmly.

The Sheikh drew a long breath which sounded like a sigh of relief.

“I am glad,” he said softly, “for their lives are dear to my young men. They have their wives and little ones, and the followers of the Mahdi seek blood. What would the learned Englishman who loves the stone writings of the ancient people do amongst the conquering spearmen of the prophet’s chosen one?”

“Answer this, Ibrahim: Do you believe this new Mahdi or Khalifa is the chosen one of the prophet?”

The Sheikh laughed softly.

“Thy servant thought much when he was young, and all his life he has had dealings with the wise men from the west who have come here from many countries to see and seek out what the old people left buried in the sands of time. He could not help, as he saw the wonders they brought to light, and sat in the same tent with them, growing wiser and thinking in their tongue. He has seen, too, again and again, fresh prophets rise to utter the same cry, ‘Lo, O people, I am the prophet’s chosen, sent to free the country from the heathen Christian dog.’ And it has always been the same: the people cry aloud and believe and follow him to the fight always to kill and destroy, to make slaves, and to pass like a flight of locusts across the land, and the new prophet eats and drinks and makes merry till he dies like the thousands he has killed; but he does not carry out his boast, and another arises and cries, ‘Lo, I am the chosen of the prophet. Upon me does the Mahdi’s mantle fall.’ Excellency, I am a man of the desert, but there is wisdom even amongst the sand, and I have picked up some, enough to know when false prophets come amongst the people. No; I do not believe the new Mahdi is the chosen one. He is only another man of blood. Why does my master ask? Why does he wish to run where there is danger to him and his friends—danger to us who would be his guides?”

“Listen,” said the professor, and in a few well-chosen words he told the old Sheikh of Harry Frere’s unhappy fate.

“Hah!” ejaculated the old Arab, after hearing the speaker to the end. “Yes; I have heard of this before. With mine own eyes I saw the German who escaped, and it was said that there was a young Englishman out yonder, a slave. And he is your brother, my lord?” he continued, turning quickly upon Frank.

“Yes; my brother, whom I have come here to save.”

“It is good,” said the Arab slowly. “But I hear that an army is going south to fight the Khalifa.”

“Yes,” said Frank bitterly; “but it will be months or years before they reach the place, and before then my brother may be dead. Sheikh,” said Frank, in a low, hoarse voice that bespoke the emotion from which he suffered “he is a slave, and in chains. I must go to his help at once.”

“The young Excellency’s words are good, and they make the eyes of his servant dark with sorrow; but it will not be freeing his brother from his chains if he goes as a young man would, to rashly throw away his life. It is so easy away out there. Here there is law, and if a man steals or raises his hand against his brother man, there is the wise judge waiting, and the judgment bar. But out yonder they make their own laws, and it is but a thrust with a spear, a stroke with a sharp sword, and the sand is ever athirst to drink up the blood, the jackals and the unclean birds to leave nothing but a few bones. Has the young Excellency thought of all this?”

“Yes,” said Frank hoarsely, “and I have seen in the darkness of the night when I could not sleep, my brother’s hands stretched out to me, and have felt that I could hear his voice calling to me to come and save him.”

The Sheikh stood silently there beneath the palms, and for some minutes no words came.

At last he repeated his former stereotyped expression.

“It is good. Yes,” he said, “it is good, and God will go before you on such an errand as this, my son. I am growing old now.”

“And you—”

Frank began to utter his thoughts impulsively, but the professor laid a hand sharply upon his arm.

“Silence,” he said, and the Arab paused for a few moments as if to give way, but as Frank checked himself he went on—

”—And old men grow to love money and greater flocks and herds, and more and better camels, as they come nearer to the time when all these things will be as naught. I have been much with the wise men from Europe, and it has been pleasant to my soul to take their piastres to make my tribe richer every year. His Excellency here has paid me much gold in the past times, and I and my people have worked justly for him, so that he has come to us again and again, till his coming has been that of a friend, and my heart was sore when I heard that he was not to be with us this season of the year. And now he has come for this as to a friend to ask the help of me and mine. He has come to me as a brother in suffering, and it is good. Yes, Excellency, you are welcome to the tents of your brethren, and we will do all we can to bring the lost one back. And what I bid my people do they will do, till I am gathered to my fathers and my son takes my place. But when I go to my people to-night and tell them of your words, they will say ‘O my father, this is not work for money. Our master must not give us payment for such a thing as this. Of a truth we will go and bring the young man back to those who mourn for him. If we redden the sand with our blood instead, well, we have died as men, and we shall sleep with the just.’”

The professor caught the old Arab’s hand, and Frank snatched impulsively at the other, the thin, nervous fingers closing tightly upon the English grip, and they stood in silence for some minutes.

“Tell him what I feel,” said Frank at last. “I can’t find words.”

“Neither can I,” said the professor, “but I must try.”

“Listen, Sheikh,” he said, “you have made our hearts glad within us. For when this news came to England I said to myself that I would seek my old Arab friend and ask him to help me to find our young brother.”

“It is good,” said the Arab softly. “You remembered the far away.”

“How could I forget the man who watched by me in his tent when I was sick unto death, and who rejoiced over me when I was brought back to life? I looked back upon you as a brother and friend, and now I have come; but this must not be only a work of friendship. You and your young men must be paid, and paid well, for all their risks, for we do not come as poor suppliants. I and my friends are fairly rich, and will gladly spend money over this adventure.”

“Yes, money is as water that we fling upon the sand at such a time as this,” said the Sheikh. “And you are rich. Well, so are we. Our life is simple; we live as we have always lived, in tents, and our riches are in our flocks and herds, our camels and our horses. We have our pride as you have, even if we do work for the rich English for the piastres they pay. But in such a work as this for our wise brother and friend, take money? No; we go to help our brother. It is for love.”

“But Sheikh—” began Frank.

“Let your young brother be silent, Excellency; the bargain is made, and we must have much thought about how this is to be done. As you said, the fight must be with cunning; much wisdom must be brought to bear. We must try and find out what the Khalifa desires most. We must go as merchants, and you will need your piastres to buy enough for a little caravan of such things as will be welcome in the enemy’s camp. Powder for the guns of his people for certain he will want. Strong wines and waters too, for he, like those of his kind, loves to break the prophet’s laws. I will leave you now to sleep and muse upon all this. Mayhap you will find some plan or scheme, as you English call it, that will be better than mine; but something of this sort it must be, and we will go.”

“Yes,” said Frank eagerly, “and we will go.”

The Sheikh shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said, “this is no work for such as you. The task is for me and mine. Good-night.”

He turned, and seemed to fade into the darkness at once, just as the doctor, who had been waiting impatiently upon the seat, strode up.

“Well,” he said, “have you secured your man?”

“Yes,” replied the professor; “but there is a battle yet to fight. He does not know our plans.”

Chapter Six.

The Starting Point.

What with the excitement and the change, as it were, into another life such as he had only read of in books, Frank Frere’s was a very poor night’s rest, so that after dozing off and waking again and again, hot, feverish, and uncomfortable, he was not sorry to see the first signs of dawn peering through his blinds.

Getting from beneath the mosquito curtain, he opened the window wider, and then stayed for a few minutes to wonder that the morning air should be so cool to his heated brows.

Returning to bed, he lay thinking for a few minutes, and then all at once thought ceased and he slept soundly for an hour, to start up in horror, full of the impression that he had overslept himself.

But a glance at his watch showed that it was still early, as he began to dress, meaning to have a look round the place before breakfast. Matters, however, shaped themselves differently, for on going to the window and looking out, there to the left lay the hotel garden with its clumps of palms and orange trees, where beneath the former he saw an early visitor in the shape of the tall, dignified-looking Sheikh in his clean white robes and turban, walking slowly to and fro, as if in expectation of seeing the professor.

Frank hurried down, too eager to reach the garden to pause and look about at the Eastern aspect of everything around; but he found that he was not first, for there before him were the professor and the doctor just passing out, and he joined them just as they reached the Sheikh, who greeted them all with solemn dignity.

“I have slept on the matter, O Excellencies,” he said.

“And now you think better of it?” said the doctor sharply.

The Sheikh smiled.

“I have thought much of it, Excellency,” he said gravely, “but the matter was agreed upon last night. All that remained was to find out the best way and the safest. I feel that it must be as I said; we—my people and I—must journey through the desert to avoid the windings of the great river, taking with us such merchandise as the Mahdi’s people will be glad to buy, and once at Khartoum or Omdurman we must trust to our good fortune about finding the prisoner. Once we do find him the merchandise must go, and we shall trust to our fleet camels and knowledge of the desert to escape. What do your Excellencies say?”

The professor turned to Frank.

“Will you tell him?” he said. “It was your idea.”

Frank shrank for the moment, but mastering his hesitancy he turned to the old Sheikh, and rapidly growing earnest and warm, he vividly described his plans, while the old man stood stern and frowning, apparently receiving everything with the greatest disfavour, merely glancing once or twice at the doctor and then at the speaker, as allusions were made to the parts they were to play. When the professor was mentioned the listener remained unmoved, but he frowned more markedly when the servant’s name was mentioned.

Frank worked himself up till in his eagerness his words came fast, as he strove hard to impress the Sheikh with the plausibility of his plans. But the old man remained unmoved, and when at last the speaker had said all that he could say there was a dead and chilling silence, the young man turning from his listener to look despairingly from the doctor to the professor, and back again, “The Sheikh cannot see it,” said the young man despairingly; “but it seems easier to me now than ever.”

“Yes,” said the doctor; “I feel that it might be done. The idea grows upon me.”

“But you do not like it, Ibrahim,” said the professor, looking hard in the solemn, impenetrable face before him.

“There is the servant—the doctor’s man,” said the Sheikh gravely. “I have not seen him.”

“You soon shall,” said the professor.

“Tell me,” continued the Sheikh; “this young man—can he make cures—can he bind up wounds and attend to an injured or dying man?”

“He has been my servant and has helped me for years,” said the doctor.

“Hah!”

Then there was silence again, and Frank gazed at the deeply-lined, calm and impassive face before him with a feeling of resentment.

“He will not do,” thought the young man; “he is too slow and plodding. We want a brisk, dashing fellow, full of spirit and recklessness.”

He turned to the professor, and spoke a few words in Latin.

The professor smiled.

“You do not know Ibrahim yet,” he said quietly. “A young Englishman dashes at a thing without consideration; an Arab looks before he leaps, and examines the starting and the landing place. Hush!”

“Yes,” said the Sheikh at last, and he bowed his head again and again as he spoke, evidently calculating every move in the great game of chess with live pieces in which he was about to engage. “Yes; his Excellency here will be the learned Hakim—he is a learned Hakim, and the people will crowd to his tent. I could take him and his Excellency the professor, who speaks our tongue like I speak it myself, anywhere, and they would be welcome. The idea is grand and cannot fail, but my heart grows faint when I think of his young Excellency here. Could he bear to act like a slave for all the many weary months in that disguise?”

“Yes,” said Frank firmly.

“And hold your peace, no matter what may befall?”

“Yes. I will” said Frank, through his set teeth.

“We may come suddenly upon the prisoner in chains; we may see him beaten by his taskmaster. Brothers love brothers,” said the Sheikh gravely. “Could the young Excellency hold his peace and stand by looking on at such a time?”

“Yes,” said Frank, in a low, harsh voice: “it is to save my brother’s life. I would not speak to save my own.”

The old Sheikh’s face was stern and rugged as ever; not a muscle twitched; but there was a new light in his eyes as they rested upon Frank’s, and he uttered a low sigh of satisfaction.

“The English are a great, brave nation,” he said gravely. “No wonder they make themselves masters of the world.”

“Then you are satisfied, Ibrahim?”

“No, Excellency, not yet,” replied the Sheikh. “Take off those clothes and put on those that I will get, and you are the interpreter of the great Frankish Hakim. That is enough. The people will rush to you and call you brother. His Excellency here, clothed as I will clothe him, that great, grand head white from the barber’s razor, with that magnificent beard hanging down over his robe in front, and with the wisdom of the physician to cure the sufferers who will come—even the Khalifa and his greatest officers would come and bend to him. Yes, all this is grand.”

“Well done,” said the professor, with a sigh of relief.

“His Excellency here is a great doctor—one who can cure bad wounds?” asked the Sheikh.

“One of the best in London,” said the professor enthusiastically. “He can almost perform miracles.”

“It is good,” said the Sheikh gravely. “He will find much work to do, for the Mahdi’s followers die like flocks and herds in time of plague for want of help. Now about his young Excellency here. He will be the Hakim’s slave?”

“Yes; his learned slave, Ibrahim. He is skilled in chemistry and science.”

“I do not know what chemistry and science mean, Excellency.”

“The power to perform natural miracles,” said the professor.

“It is enough; but he must do as he said. As he is now he would be watched by suspicious eyes; I could not answer for his life. As the Hakim’s black slave who helps his master and is mute, yes, he will be safe too. But this man—this servant? What can he do? Will he be black and mute?”

“H’m, no,” said the professor, hesitating.

“Has he a brother in chains and misery whom he would die to save?”

“H’m, no,” said the professor again. “Frank, lad,” he said, in Latin, “I’m afraid Sam will not pass.”

“What will he do, then?” asked the Sheikh.

“Attend on his master, the Hakim.”

“One of my young men can do that.”

“Hold the wounded when the Hakim bandages their cuts.”

“One of my young men would be safer far.”

“He knows the Hakim’s ways, and will sponge the bullet-wounds and fetch the water bowl.”

“The Hakim’s black slave should do all that, Excellency.”

“I’m afraid you are right,” said the professor; “but I want to take him if we can. Come, he is a capital cook.”

“A learned Hakim like his Excellency here would live on simple food, such as one of my young men could prepare.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say, Ibrahim. He is a very useful fellow.”

“But his being with us might mean making the Mahdi’s followers doubt, and once they doubted it means death to us all.”

The professor’s face was a study as he turned to Frank.

“He’s right, my lad; he’s right.”

“It may mean ruin to our journey, even as men perish when they make for a water-hole, to find it dry. Can he do anything else?”

“Heaps of things,” cried the professor.

“But they are as nothing if they are not suited to our task, Excellency. Does he look to be an Englishman?”

“A thorough-paced Cockney, Ibrahim, I am sorry to say.”

“Cockney, Excellency?”

“Well, very English indeed.”

“Would he be painted black, Excellency?” said Ibrahim.

“He’d only look like an imitation Christy Minstrel if he were, eh, Frank?” said the professor.

“Would he have his head shaved like his Excellency the Hakim?” said the Sheikh.

“Got him!” cried the professor excitedly. “Here, Ibrahim, you wanted to know what he can do. He’s the Hakim’s barber, and can shave a head.”

“Ah-h-h-h!” said the Sheikh, drawing out the ejaculation to an inordinate length. “He can shave—and well?”

“Splendidly! Can’t he, Morris?”

“Oh, yes, excellently well,” said the doctor, smiling.

The Sheikh took off his turban and softly passed one hand over a head which was like a very old, deeply-stained billiard ball at the top, but was stubbly at the back and sides, as if it had not been touched by a barber for a week.

“May he shave me, Excellency?” said the old man. “I should like to see the man and whether he is skilful enough to deceive those who will watch him with jealous eyes.”

“Of course you can see him,” said the doctor. “He will be in my room.”

“Let’s go, then, at once,” said the professor. “I say, Ibrahim, there need be no disguise about him. He is a Frank, and the Hakim’s slave.”

“Yes, that will do, Excellency,” said the Sheikh. “The Hakim’s skill as a learned man and curer of the people’s ills will cover all. If this man is clever, too, as a barber every Moslem will look upon him as a friend. Barber, surgeon, and the Hakim’s slave. Yes, that will do.”

Five minutes after the party were in the doctor’s room, and upon the bell being answered by a native servant, Sam was fetched from his breakfast, to come up wondering, half expecting that something was wrong.

“Sam,” said the doctor gravely, “I wish you to shave this gentleman’s head.”

“Certainly, sir. I’ll ring for some hot water.”

“No,” said the professor; “we’re going where hot water will be scarce—I mean that sort of hot water. Do it with cold.”

“Right, sir,” said the man, in the most unruffled way, and slipping off his coat he turned up his sleeves, placed a chair for the Sheikh, opened the doctor’s dressing-case, brought out shaving-box, strop, and razors, and then made the old chief look a little askance as one of the latter was opened, examined, and laid down, while the brush and shaving-box were brought so vigorously into action, that in a very short time the Arab’s head was thoroughly lathered, and left to soak.

“I always prefer hot water, gentlemen,” said Sam, confidentially; “it’s better for the patient, and better for the razor, for it improves the edge. But these are splendid tools, as I know.”

Whipping open one of the choice razors, and drawing the strop as if it were a short Roman sword, Sam made the Sheikh wince a little as the sharp blade was made to play to and fro and from end to end, changing from side to side, and with all the dash and light touch of a clever barbel, being finished off by sharp applications to the palm of the operator’s hand.

“There we are, sir,” said Sam, who seemed to be quite in his element. “Don’t squirm, sir; I won’t cut you, nor hurt you either. I was taught shaving by a first-class hand.”

“Don’t talk so much, Sam,” said Frank impatiently. “We want you to shave this Arab gentleman carefully and well.”

“Well, ain’t I trying my best, Master Frank? Look at that, and look at that, and that. Razor cuts beautifully.”

As he spoke he scraped off with long sweeps the white, soapy foam, which came away darkened with tiny swathes of blackish-grey stubble.

“I call this a regular big shave. Don’t hurt, do I, sir?”

The Arab uttered a grunt which might have meant yes or no.

Sam took it to mean the latter.

“Thought not, sir. That’s fine shaving-soap, sir; he—mollient; softens the stubble and the skin at the same time. My word! this is a prime razor. Only fancy, Mr Frank, being out here, shaving a native!”

“Will you keep your tongue quiet!” whispered Frank angrily. “This is a serious matter. Mind what you’re doing, and don’t talk.”

“Don’t ask a man to do impossibilities, sir,” said the man appealingly; “did you ever know anyone shaved without the operator talking all the time? It’s natural, sir, and seems to make you shave cleaner. I’m a-doing the very best I can. I must talk, or I should get nicking his skin and spoil the job.”

“Then for goodness’ sake talk,” cried Frank petulantly.

“Thankye, sir; now I can get on,” and with wonderful celerity Sam scraped away with light hand till the last line of lather was taken off, a touch or two here and there given with the brush, and this fresh soap removed, after which the razor was closed, sponge and water applied, and a clean towel handed to the Sheikh, who received it with a grave smile and nod of the head.

“Good,” he said softly. “Clever barber. It is good.”

“Then you are satisfied?” said the professor eagerly.

“Quite, Excellency. Now I have no fear.”

Sam smiled too with satisfaction as he carefully wiped and re-stropped the razor before placing it in its case. At the same time, though, there was a peculiar, inquisitive look in his eyes. For the whole business seemed to be strange, and he looked longingly at Frank as if hoping that he would follow and explain, when the doctor said—

“That will do, Samuel. Go and have your breakfast.”

But Frank did not follow, for he was eager to hear what the Sheikh would say as soon as they were alone.

Little was said, though, the old Arab being anxious to go and rejoin his followers staying in the village half a mile outside the town, promising to be back during the morning to talk over the arrangements for the venturesome journey.

“Will he come back and hold to the promise?” said Frank to the professor.

“For certain,” was the reply.

“But do you think he will prove business-like and go to work heart and soul in our service?”

“I can only speak from past experience,” replied the professor. “I have always found him thoroughly trustworthy, and I feel sure he will be so now.”

“And about the preparations, the dress, provisions, and the many odds and ends we shall require?”

“All that I shall leave to Ibrahim. What you have to get ready is a couple of portmanteaus that can be swung one on either side of a strong camel by means of straps. These must contain all your chemical and electrical apparatus in one, the doctor’s instruments and medicines in the other, with an ample supply of lint, bandages, antiseptics, plaisters, and the like. Chloroform, of course. But there must be no superfluities. As to dress, we must place ourselves in Ibrahim’s hands.”

“What about weapons?” said Frank. “Swords and revolvers, of course. What about rifles?”

“I have brought two or three antiquated weapons for show; that is all. We are not going to fight. Give up all thoughts of that.”

Frank stared at the speaker anxiously.

“Surely we ought to carry revolvers,” he said.

“Surely we ought not. If we go as men of war we shall fail. If we go as men of peace we may succeed. Leave all that to Ibrahim, and we shall know what is to be done when he comes back this morning. Now then, the first thing to be done is to eat and drink.”

Frank sighed.

“Without this we shall do no work.”

Frank knew the wisdom there was in these words, and he resigned himself to his fate, accompanying his companions to the hotel coffee-room to take their places at the table set apart for them, to become for the time being a mere group of the many, for the place was full of visitors staying, and others making a temporary sojourn before continuing their steamer’s route, these to India or China, those back to Europe; while other tables were occupied by officers awaiting their orders to go up country, or go on making preparations for the advance of the troops already there, and further arrangements for those coming out by the great transports expected; for it was the common talk now that before long a large force was to march against the Mahdi’s successor, and Gordon was to be at last avenged.

Chapter Seven.

By Moonlight.

The people at the hotel were too much occupied with their own affairs to pay much heed to three ordinary visitors and their servant. It was rumoured that one of them was a famous Egyptologist, but plenty of scientists came and went in this city of change, so that in a few hours Frank’s anxiety as to the risk of their expedition being stopped, died out, and the visits of the Sheikh excited no more notice than those of a dragoman or letter of boats and donkeys who waited upon the tourists and arranged to take them to the pyramids, the river, or other objects of interest within easy reach.

When Ibrahim appeared again about midday, he inquired anxiously about the amount of baggage the party intended to take, and seemed pleased with the narrow compass into which, under the professor’s superintendence, it was to be condensed. He then had a long discussion with the doctor, and when this was over it was announced that the Arab was going to be busy in the bazaar for the rest of the day, and that in the evening he would be at the door of the hotel with four camels and attendants to take the baggage that was ready, the rest being placed in the care of the manager ready for them upon their return from an expedition with the Sheikh.

“That’s prompt,” said the professor. “Are you satisfied, Frank?”

“More than satisfied. But about our disguises, our provisions for the journey, and other preparations? We have done nothing yet.”

“There is nothing to do,” said the professor quietly.

“But our disguises?” said the doctor anxiously.

“Ibrahim will see to all that. We don’t want to draw anyone’s attention to the task we have in hand. If we did the news would spread, and run like wildfire amongst the people, perhaps reach the enemy’s camp.”

“But can we leave everything to this Arab Sheikh?”

“Everything,” said the professor, “as I have left things again and again. Here is our position: I am known here, and it is no novelty for me to go upon an expedition with this old guide. So all we have to do is to eat our dinner in peace, and when Ibrahim comes, mount our beasts and go off in the moonlight and silently steal away through the further parts of the city, and in a very short time be swallowed up in the mysterious gloom, travelling onward over the sand.”

“All night?” said the doctor.

“Yes, all night, and in good time in the morning we shall have reached the tents of the Sheikh, where we shall have an early meal and sleep. When we shall go on depends upon the preparations there. These will be extremely simple, but they will be sufficient. Make your minds easy, and throw all the arrangement of the journey upon Ibrahim and me. He will do his best, but as he said to me an hour ago, the success of our adventure must be left to fate.”

“But our preparations seem so small,” said Frank uneasily.

“Preparations for desert journeys are small from an Englishman’s point of view. A man here takes his camel, a bag of meal and another of dates, with a waterskin to fill when it is more than a day’s journey to the next well. The Sheikh expressed himself satisfied with our baggage, but in his eyes it is very large.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “I have said very little, but I share Frank’s uneasiness. We seem to be making ridiculously small preparations. Surely we ought to go better prepared if we are to get to our journey’s end.”

“We shall never get to it if we do,” said the professor gruffly, “and the sooner you two try to fit yourselves to the necessities of a desert journey the better.”

“I’m ready to do anything,” said the doctor, “but I do not want to fail from doing too little.”

“What more would you do than Ibrahim is doing?”

“I can hardly say on the spur of the moment, but with the exception of my medicines and instruments, and Frank’s chemicals and things, we seem as if we are going on the march in the clothes we stand up in.”

“Yes,” said the professor coolly, “and those we are going to leave behind in Ibrahim’s tents.”

“Is all this true, Frank?” said the doctor.

“I suppose so,” was the reply; “but certainly things are moving far more rapidly than I anticipated.”

“It is what you wished,” said the professor.

“Then all we have to do now is to be ready?”

“Yes, that is all.”

It was in furtherance of this that directly after dinner Frank summoned Sam and told him that they were to start in about an hour.

“So the guv’nor’s been telling me, sir; but he says we’re to leave nearly everything behind.”

“Yes, Sam; it will be safe enough here.”

“Well, it caps me, sir, that it do! Mr Landon took pretty well everything away that I thought we wanted, and now he says that we’re to leave the miserable little lot he chose himself.”

“Yes,” said Frank quietly.

“The only thing we’re taking plenty of, it seems to me, is physic.”

“But you’ve packed the shaving tackle, Sam?” said Frank hastily.

“Oh, yes; that goes in my pockets, sir; but one can’t live on a wash and brush-up, and one wants something else on a journey besides soap. Seems to me, sir, that the doctor thinks a little physic’s the best thing to have with us, because it spoils the appetite and keeps people from wanting to eat. He’s taken plenty of care of the people out yonder, but I should have liked to see him provide a little more for us.”

“Don’t be alarmed. I daresay we shall find plenty.”

“From what the people here tell me about the desert, sir, I don’t think we shall; but there, I’m not going to grumble, sir. An hour’s time, eh?”

“Yes, in less now. Then the Sheikh will be here with the camels.”

“To take us right away into the desert, sir. Do you think he’s safe?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, I hope he is, sir; but if he means mischief and plays any games when he’s got us right away from the police, I just hope he won’t ask me to shave his head again.”

“Why?” said Frank, smiling.

“Why, sir? Well, because it won’t be safe.”

It was about nine o’clock, the moon past the full, rising, richly golden of hue, in the east, and the air moist and fragrant with the cloying scent of the orange trees, when with a strange feeling of unreality about the whole proceeding, the little English party passed the groups of visitors smoking and chatting in the garden, or listening to the strains of a very excellent band. It almost seemed to the doctor that he ought to go and occupy the seat he had found so pleasant on the previous night; but the professor was by his side talking earnestly of the peculiarities of a night ride in the desert, and Frank was close behind with Sam.

In another minute they were in an open court, where, looking mysterious and strange, were a group of about a dozen camels and their leaders, in front of whom stood the figure of the Sheikh, his white robes and turban looking thoroughly in keeping with the strangely formed animals, four of which were keeping up a peculiar, querulous, discontented whining grunt, and turning their heads from side to side in their disgust at being laden with portmanteaus and bags, while their fellows had been allowed to go scot-free.

And now all seemed more unreal than ever; and anything less like a start upon so dangerous an expedition it would have been impossible to imagine.

“Ready, Ibrahim?” said the professor.

“Yes, Excellency,” replied the Sheikh; “it is past the time, and the camels are loaded.”

Frank looked round the court, where a couple of servants were standing beneath an arcade, while the moon was just peering over the house in a one-eyed fashion as if watching what was going on; but no one came from within to see the night start being made, and with the feeling of dreamy unreality increasing, the young man replied to the Sheikh’s indication by stepping to the kneeling camel he was to ride.

“Beg pardon, Mr Frank,” whispered Sam, coming close to his side. “Am I to ride one of them long-legged things?”

“Yes, of course. You’re not afraid?”

“Afraid, sir? Not me. I’ve rid most everything, and I meant to have gone up to the Zoo for a lesson in camels, only there warn’t time. I’m not afraid, and I’m going to do it, but I do begin to feel as if I ought to be tied on.”

However, Sam climbed to his strange saddle, as did the rest, and a few minutes later the silent-pacing, long-legged animals were following their leader out of the court and into the lighted road, down which they stole on in the moonlight like strange creatures in a picture, passing people, but taking no one’s attention, while more than ever the whole scene appeared to the party like a portion of some dream.

Chapter Eight.

The Desert.

“How are you getting on, Sam?” said Frank, after they had progressed about a mile, during which the outskirts of the city had given place to garden, cultivated field, trees dotted here and there, and then hedges which looked weird, ghastly, and strange in the moonlight, being composed of those fleshy, nightmare-looking plants of cactus growth, the prickly pears, with their horrible thorns, while more and more the way in front began to spread out wild, desolate and strange in the soft, misty, silvery grey of the moonlight, through which the long-legged animals stalked, casting weird shadows upon the soft, sandy road, and save for one thing the passing of the little train would have been in an oppressive silence, for the spongy feet of the birdlike animals rose and fell without a sound.

“How’m I getting on, sir?” was the reply. “Well, about as bad as a man can. Look at me, sir; there I am. That’s my shadder. I don’t know what our servants at home would say to see me going along over the sand this how. Look at my shadder, sir; looks like a monkey a-top of a long-legged shed.”

“The shadows do look strange, Sam.”

“Strange, sir? They look horrid. Just like so many ghosts out for a holiday, and it’s us. And look at what makes the shadders. They look creepy in the moonshine. Why, if we was out on a country road now in dear old England, and the police on duty saw us we should give ’em fits.”

“Rather startling, certainly,” said Frank. “It does look a weird procession.”

“Seems a mad sort of a set out altogether, sir: three British gentlemen and a respectable servant going out for a ride in the night in a place like this a-top of these excruciating animals, along with so many silent blacks dressed in long white sheets. It all seems mad to me, sir, and as if we ought to be in bed. I fancy I am sometimes, and having uncomfortable dreams, like one does after cold boiled beef for supper, and keep expecting to wake up with a pain in the chest. But I don’t, for there we are sneaking along in this silent way with our tall shadders seeming to watch us. Ugh! It’s just as if we were going to do something wicked somewhere.”

“It’s all so strange, Sam,” said Frank quietly. “You are not used to it.”

“That’s true enough, sir, and I don’t feel as if I ever should be. Just look at this thing! It’s like an insult to call it a saddle. Saddle! why it’s more like—I don’t know what; and I’ve been expecting to have an accident with this stick-up affair here in front. How do you get on with your legs, sir?”

“Pretty well,” said Frank, smiling. “I’ve managed better during the past ten minutes.”

“I wish you’d show me how you do it, sir, for I get on awfully, and I’m that sore that I’m beginning to shudder.”

“It’s a matter of use, Sam. Try and sit a little more upright, like this.”

“Like that, sir?” said the man, excitedly. “No, thankye, sir. It’s bad enough like this. I suppose I must grin and bear it. Here, I’ve tried straightforward striddling like one would on a donkey, but this beast don’t seem to have no shape in him. Then I’ve tried like a lady, sitting left-handed with my legs, and then after I’ve got tired that way for a bit, and it don’t work comfortable, I’ve tried right-handed with my legs. But it’s no good. Bit ago I saw one of these niggers shut his legs up like a pocket foot-rule, and I says to myself, ‘That’s the way, then;’ so I began to pull my legs up criss-cross like a Turk in a picture.”

“Well, did that do?” said Frank, listening to the man, for the remarks kept away his own troubled thoughts.

“Nearly did for me, sir. I had to claw hold like a kitten to the top of a basket of clothes, or I should have been down in the sand, with this wicked-looking brute dancing a hornpipe in stilts all over me. Ugh, you beast! don’t do that.”

“What’s the matter?” said Frank, as the man shuddered and exclaimed at the animal he rode.

“Oh, I do wish he wouldn’t, sir. It’s just as if he don’t like me, and does it on purpose.”

“Does what?”

“Turns his head and neck round to look at me, just like a big giant goose, and he opens and shuts his mouth, and leers and winks at me, sir. It gives me quite a turn. It’s bad enough when he goes on steady, but when he does that I feel just as I did when we crossed the Channel, and as if I must go below. I say, sir, can a man be sea-sick with riding on a camel?”

“I don’t know about sea-sick, Sam,” said Frank, laughing outright, “but I really did feel very uncomfortable at first. The motion is so peculiar.”

“Ain’t it, sir?” cried Sam eagerly. “Beg your pardon sir, for saying it, but I am glad you felt it too. It upset me so that I got thinking I’d no business to have left my pantry, because I wasn’t up to this sort of thing.”

“Cheer up, and make the best of it,” said Frank quietly. “You’ll soon get accustomed to what is very new to us all.”

“I will, sir. I’ll try, but everything seems to be going against me. Ugh! Look at that now. Ugh! the smell of it!”

“Smell? Why, I only notice the professor’s pipe.”

“Yes, sir, that’s it. It seems horrid now, and there he sits with that long, snaky pipe and his legs twisted in a knot, smoking away as comfortably as the old Guy Fox in the tablecloth that I shaved. He went to sleep and nodded, for I watched him, and he keeps on see-sawing and looking as if he’d tumble off; but he seems to be good friends with his camel, for it kept on balancing him and keeping him up. I wish I could go to sleep too.”

“Well, try,” said Frank.

“Try, sir? What, to wake up with a bump, and sit in the sand seeing this ridgment of legs and shadows going off in the distance? No, thank you, sir. They tell me there’s lions and jackals and hyaenas out here. No, thankye, sir; I’m going to fight it out.”

Just then the professor checked his camel and tried to bring it alongside of the pair behind, when a struggle ensued, the quaint-looking creature refusing to obey the rein or to alter its position in the train, whining, groaning, and appealing against force being used to place it where it made up its mind there must be danger.

“That’s how those brutes that are carrying the luggage went on, sir,” whispered Sam to Frank. “Groaning and moaning and making use of all sorts of bad language. One of ’em kep’ it up just like a human being, and it was as if he was threatening to write to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for them to put a stop to our ill-using him and tying heavy things on his back and making creases with ropes on his front—I mean his underneath, sir.”

Just then one of the Sheikh’s followers, who had seen the trouble, came from where he was walking beside the baggage camels, and led the obstinate animal to where it was required to go, and it ceased its objections.

“Fine animals for displaying obstinacy, Frank,” said the professor.

“Yes; they’d beat donkeys of the worst type.”

“I daresay they would; but they have plenty of good qualities to make up for their bad ones. How do you like the riding?”

“I’ll tell you when I’ve had some more experience. At present it would not be fair.”

“Perhaps not,” said the professor. “How do you get on, Sam?”

The butler groaned.

“Hullo! Is it as bad as that?”

“Worse, sir, ever so much. Couldn’t I have a donkey, sir? I saw some fine ones in Cairo well up to my weight.”

“I’m afraid not, Sam. But you’ll soon get used to the animal you are riding.”

“Never, sir, never,” said Sam.

“Nonsense, man! Once you get used to the poor creatures you will think it delightful. I could go to sleep on mine, and trust it to keep ambling along.”

“Do what, sir?”

“Ambling gently.”

“Then yours is a different sort, sir, to mine. Ambling’s going like a lady’s mare does in the Park, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sam; that’s quite correct, I believe.”

“This one don’t, sir, a bit. If you shut your eyes and hold tight, sir, you forget that he’s an animal, but begin thinking he must be what he seems like to me—a sort of giant sea-goose with you on his back and him swimming in rough water and going up and down horrid.”

“Oh, that’s the peculiarity of the creature’s pace. I’m used to it, and I find the elasticity most enjoyable.”

“Elastic, sir? Yes, that’s just it, sir; elastic. A bit back he was going on like an Indy-rubber ball; one o’ that sort, sir, as is all wind and skin. Made me wish he was one, and that I’d got a pin in my hand.”

“Oh, never mind, my lad,” said the professor good-humouredly; “its rough work to learn riding a horse, but once you’ve mastered the task it’s pleasant enough. What do you think of the desert, Frank?”

“Do you consider that we have reached the desert now?” was the reply, as Sam fell back a little, leaving them to converse.

“Oh, yes; we’ve left the cultivated ground behind, and right away south and west now, saving a few oases, there’s nothing but the sand covering all about here the ruins of ancient cities. I believe if we dug anywhere here we should find traces—buildings, temples, or tombs.”

“Has there been cultivation, too, here?”

“No doubt. It only wants water, sandy as it is, for it to break out blushing with soft green.”

“Where does the Nile lie from here?”

“Away to the left.”

“Shall we see its waters when the morning comes?”

“No; we are going farther and farther away to a bit of an oasis where the Sheikh’s people are gathered with their flocks. They find pasture there at this time of year, and a little employment with the travellers who come to Cairo. In the summer time, when the city is pretty well empty, they go right away to some high ground where it is rocky and fairly fertile. We shall reach the present camp before the sun gets hot in the morning.”

“How is the doctor getting on?” asked Frank, after a pause.

“Pretty well. It makes him a little irritable, so I don’t think I’d ask him. He is enjoying the night ride, though.”

Sam sighed and said to himself—

“He says that because he wants to make the best of it, but I’m not going to believe my poor guv’nor’s enjoying this. He’s wishing himself back in Wimpole Street, I know.”

“What’s that?” said Frank suddenly.

“What? I see nothing.”

“No, no. I mean that wild cry.”

“Only a jackal. I daresay if you listen you will hear another answer it. Pleasant note, isn’t it?”

“Horrible! It sounded like some poor creature in pain.”

“Hungry, perhaps,” said the professor coolly. “Fine, wild, weird prospect, this, eh?”

“It seems very dream-like and strange.”

“Yes, it impressed me like that at first. After a while you begin to think of how delightful it is, and what a change from pacing over the burning sand in the daylight with the sun making the air quiver and glow like a furnace, and your mouth turn dry and lips crack with the parching you have to undergo.”

“Shall we have to journey much by night?”

“Oh, yes; we shall do most of our marching then, but we need not trouble about that. Ibrahim will do what is best. I have had a long talk with him, and he proposes to go in a roundabout way for the enemy’s camp.”

“What! not go straight there?”

“No; it would mean suspicion. We must not go there unasked.”

“Landon!” said Frank appealingly.

“It is quite right, and even if it takes time it will be the surest way. Ibrahim says that if the Hakim performs a few cures as we get nearer, the news thereof will reach the Khalifa’s camp, where men die off in hundreds, and after a time he will be sure to send for us. Just think of the difference in our reception.”

Frank nodded.

“In the one case we should be received with suspicion and most probably turned back, perhaps be made prisoners; while, if at the new Mahdi’s wish we are sent for, we go there in triumph, and are respected and well treated by everyone.”

“Yes, yes; but the time will be passing away so swiftly, and that poor fellow lying in agony and despair.”

“Yes, but the more reason for being cautious. We must not build the castle of our hopes upon the sand, Frank. I know it seems very hard, and no doubt I sound cold-blooded for agreeing so readily to this Arab’s proposals, but I speak from ten years’ experience of the old fellow. He has thrown himself heart and soul into the adventure, and he is well worthy of our trust; so, even at the expense of going against your own wishes now and then, give way and follow out the old man’s advice, even when he would be ready to give way to you.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Frank; “but it seems to me that I have already bound myself down to profound obedience in all things by undertaking to go as a slave.”

“Well, yes, that does bind you, certainly,” said the professor.

“But what about these men that the Sheikh is taking with us? They will be in the secret.”

“Of course.”

“Suppose they betray what I am.”

“That would mean betraying their Sheikh. You need have no fear of that.”

“Well, let’s talk about something else. We are bound now for the Sheikh’s encampment. What is going to be done first when we get there?”

“We put off Europe and put on Africa as far as is necessary.”

“Hah!” said Frank, with a sigh.

“What does that mean, my lad?” said the professor sternly. “Are you beginning to repent?”

“Repent!” said Frank between his teeth. “What a question! I am longing to commence, for so far everything has been preparation.”

“And a very brief preparation,” said the professor, “if you come to think of how short a time it is since you dashed in upon us after dinner that evening with your news.”

“Well, don’t reproach me, Landon.”

“Not I, my lad. I know what you must feel. All I want of you now is for you to play the stoic. Make up your mind that you have done your utmost to set the ball rolling; now let it roll, and only give it a touch when you are asked. Believe me that you will be doing your best then.”

“I will try,” said Frank firmly. “Only give me time. I am schooling myself as hardly as I can. It is a difficult part to play.”

The professor reached out his hand and gripped his young companion’s shoulder firmly, riding on for some minutes without relaxing his grasp, the touch conveying more in the way of sympathy than any words would have done, while the discomforts of the novel ride seemed to die away, and the soft dreaminess of the night grew soothing; the vast silvery grey expanse, melting away in its vastness, became lit-up with a faint halo of hope, and with his spirits rising, Frank seemed another man when the professor spoke again—

“Bob Morris will be feeling neglected.”

“Go to him, then,” said Frank quietly.

“No; you go first. But there’s nothing like making a beginning at once.”

“In what way?” asked Frank, for his companion paused.

“Begin treating him as what he is to be till our task is done—the learned Hakim; and begin to school yourself into acting as his slave.”

“Now?”

“Why not? I spoke of him just now as Bob Morris. That’s the last time till we are safely under the British flag again.”

“Yes, you are right,” said Frank, and urging on his camel the animal stepped out and passed of its own accord alongside that of the doctor, who uttered a sigh of relief as he saw who it was.

“That’s better, Frank,” he said. “I was beginning to feel a bit lonely, for this ride is not very cheerful, and the bringing of fresh muscles into play is producing aches and pains.”

Frank raised his hands to his head, and bowed down.

“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor; “not such a very bad imitation of a salaam. What have you two been talking about?”

Frank raised his hand, and saw that his tall shadow was repeating the action, as he pointed straight ahead.

“About our journey’s end, eh?” said the doctor. “That’s right. I shall be glad to get there and lie down, if it is only upon the sand. How do you get on with your camel?”

Frank made a despairing gesture.

“Same here,” said the doctor. “I wish we could have had some lessons first. But use is second nature, and I suppose this weary, aching sensation of being waved about in the air will soon pass off. But I say, Frank, my lad.”

Frank turned to him.

“There, that will do for to-night,” said the doctor pettishly. “I haven’t cut your tongue out yet, so just talk like a Christian. This vast open place seems to sit upon my spirits, especially now that we’re making this night journey instead of lying comfortably in our beds. Talk to me. You’ve done acting enough for the present.”

“Very well,” said Frank quietly; “but Landon thinks with me, that the sooner I begin to play my part the sooner I shall make myself perfect.”

“Well, yes, of course,” grunted the doctor; “but leave it till we put on our costumes. I say, I think this Sheikh is all right.”

“Yes; I have perfect faith in him now.”

“So have I. He’s a fine old fellow; there is no doubt about that. But Frank, my lad, I don’t think I could have kept this up much longer if you had gone on with that dumb-motion business. It only wanted that to give me the horrors, for this night ride seems to be about the most mysteriously weird business possible to conceive. Just look at the ghostly appearance of the camels and their leaders, the long, strongly marked shadows, and the mysterious light! I can’t get away from the idea that it is all a dream.”

“That is how it has been impressing us,” replied Frank.

“And no wonder. Everything is terribly unreal, and between ourselves I am beginning to lose heart.”

“You?” said Frank reproachfully. “You, the calm, grave surgeon, accustomed to terrible scenes, to awful emergencies where men’s lives depend upon your coolness and that calm, firm manner in which you face all difficulties!”

“Yes, at home and in my proper place. But here I seem to be masquerading—playing, as it were.”

“Playing!” said Frank reproachfully.

“Well, I hardly mean that, my dear boy,” said the doctor softly; “but all this is so strange and—well, yes—risky.”

“Yes, it is risky,” said Frank sadly, “but—”

“Yes, I know,” said the doctor, interrupting; “I do think of why we are doing it, and I can’t help shrinking a bit and doubting my nerve to carry it all through. If I break down in any way I shall sacrifice the liberty if not the lives of you all. It is this that makes me feel doubts about my nerve.”

“I have none whatever,” said Frank quietly. “You know how often you have talked to me about the operations you have performed.”

“Well, yes, I have talked to you a good deal both before and after some of them. Harry and I always opened out our hearts to one another, and when he went away he asked me to make you his substitute—to take his place with you.”

“So like Hal,” said Frank softly. “Well, and so you have.”

“Have I, lad? Well, I have tried, and it has been very pleasant to have you come to me to chat over your experiences and successes and failures, and to tell you mine.”

“You have made more of a man of me,” said Frank softly; “often and often when I have felt that I was only an ignorant, blundering boy.”

“I never saw much of the ignorance or blundering,” said the doctor quietly. “You were always too enthusiastic over your studies for that.”

“Never mind about my qualities,” said Frank, with a little laugh; “it is like trying to put me off from talking about you. As I was going to say, don’t you remember telling me that whenever you were going to perform an operation upon some poor suffering fellow-creature you always felt a strong sensation of shrinking and want of nerve?”

“Of course. I always do.”

“And that you always prayed that your efforts might be rightly guided?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, very softly and slowly.

“And that the next day when you went into the operating theatre and stood there with the patient before you, the students and surgeons with your assistants about you ready for the task, you always felt as calm and cool as possible, and that your nerves were like steel?”

“Yes! It is so.”

“Then why should you feel doubt now? I have none.”

The doctor was silent for a few minutes as they rode on through the mysterious-looking night, their shadows bowing and undulating on the sand.

“I suppose it is the same,” he said at last, “with the soldiers going into some engagement. There is the feeling of nervousness which they suffer from till the stern work begins, and then—well, they act as brave men do act.”

“Even if they are generals in the great fight with disease and death,” said Frank gravely. “I wish I could feel as sure of our ultimate success as I do of your being perfectly calm and self-contained in all you do.”

“I should be, my dear boy,” said the doctor, “if I could only get rid of the feeling that I shall be an impostor.”

Frank laughed pleasantly.

“That feeling troubling you again?” he said. “How absurd! Are you going to cheat the poor creatures you attend with sham medicines?”

“Am I going to do what?” said the doctor indignantly.

“And play tricks with the wounds they are suffering from?”

“My dear Frank!”

“And make believe to extract bullets and sew up wounds, or set broken bones?”

“My good lad, are you talking in your sleep? Did I ever do anything but my very best for the poor creatures to whom my poor skill was necessary—did I ever give less attention to the humblest patient than I do to the wealthiest or highest in position?”

“Never,” said Frank warmly. “That big, generous disposition of yours would never have allowed it.”

“Then why did you talk in so absurd a strain?” Frank laughed merrily, and for the time being he was the schoolboy again.

“Please, sir,” he said mockingly, “it wasn’t me. Answer me first,” he cried. “Why do you talk about feeling like an impostor? Why,” continued the young man warmly, “I feel as if through my plan I am going to heap blessings upon mine enemy’s head. I am taking you through this country, amongst these cruelly savage people, to do nothing but good. Wherever you go your name will be blessed; they will think of the Great Hakim as long as they live.”

“Look here, young man,” said the doctor playfully, “I’ve made a mistake to-night. You began to play your part very nicely, and you were as quiet as a dumb waiter—that old black mahogany one in the dining-room at home. Then for company’s sake I stopped you, and here is the consequence. You took advantage of the liberty given you, and at once developed into a base flatterer, putting your adulation into all the flowery language you could muster. Now, no more of it, if you please. There, to speak soberly and well: Frank, lad, I am not the great, learned Hakim of your young imagination, but the hard-working student who tries his best to acquire more and more knowledge of our fallen human nature so as to fight against death like an earnest man. I know something of my profession, and I work hard, and always shall, to know more, so as to apply my skill in the best way. Please God, I hope to do a great deal of good during this our journey, and I promise you that I will think only of this application of my knowledge. Yes, I feel now that I can go on and face all that I have to do, for I shall not be such a sorry impostor, after all.”

“Isn’t it my turn now for a chat?” said the professor. “You two seem to be having a most interesting discussion, and it’s very dull back here. The Sheikh is fast asleep on his camel, and poor Sam has become speechless with misery, in spite of all I could say to him about mastering the art of camel-riding. He says he can’t get over the feeling that he is at sea. How are you two getting on?”

“Better, I suppose,” said the doctor, “for I have not thought so much of the motion lately. I suppose I’m getting used to it.”

“And you, Frank?”

“I had forgotten it too till you spoke. But I am utterly tired out. How long will it be before we get to the tents?”

“Oh, hours yet,” said the professor cheerfully.

“What!” cried the doctor and Frank in a breath.

“Not till well on in the morning,” said the professor; and then, as his companions turned to gaze at one another in dismay, “but we’re going to halt soon, to rest the camels and—ourselves.”

Chapter Nine.

The Hakim Begins.

The professor had hardly finished speaking when something dark loomed up through the silvery gloom, and the camels began making a peculiar, complaining sound, while they slightly increased their pace and soon after stopped short, craning their necks and muttering and grumbling peevishly.

A water-hole had been reached, where the beasts were refreshed, after they had been relieved of their living burdens—those which were loaded with the travellers’ baggage having to be content with a good drink and then folding their legs to crouch in the sand and rest.

“Yes, it’s all very well, Mr Frank,” said Sam, “but I don’t believe that thing which carries me is half so tired as I am. Oh my! See-sawing as I’ve been backwards and forwards all these hours, till my spinal just across the loins feels as if it had got a big hinge made in it and it wanted oiling.”

“Lie flat down upon your back and rest it.”

“But won’t the grass be damp, sir?”

“Grass?” said Frank, smiling. “Where are you going to find it?”

“I forgot, sir,” said the man wearily. “No grass; all sand. That comes of being used to riding in a Christian country.”