When he returned he said something to his comrades, one of whom closed
in upon each side of the minister's camel, so as to prevent him from
falling. The friendly negro sidled his beast up to the Colonel, and
whispered to him.

"We are going to halt presently, Belmont," said Cochrane.

"Thank God! They may give us some water. We can't go on like this."

"I told Tippy Tilly that, if he could help us, we would turn him into a
Bimbashi when we got him back into Egypt. I think he's willing enough
if he only had the power. By Jove, Belmont, do look back at the river."

Their route, which had lain through sand-strewn khors with jagged, black
edges--places up which one would hardly think it possible that a camel
could climb--opened out now on to a hard, rolling plain, covered thickly
with rounded pebbles, dipping and rising to the violet hills upon the
horizon. So regular were the long, brown pebble-strewn curves, that
they looked like the dark rollers of some monstrous ground-swell. Here
and there a little straggling sage-green tuft of camel-grass sprouted up
between the stones. Brown plains and violet hills--nothing else in
front of them! Behind lay the black jagged rocks through which they had
passed with orange slopes of sand, and then far away a thin line of
green to mark the course of the river. How cool and beautiful that
green looked in the stark, abominable wilderness! On one side they
could see the high rock--the accursed rock which had tempted them to
their ruin. On the other the river curved, and the sun gleamed upon the
water. Oh, that liquid gleam, and the insurgent animal cravings, the
brutal primitive longings, which for the instant took the soul out of
all of them! They had lost families, countries, liberty, everything,