do the same. This hope he at once shared with Nell, who smiled at him for the first time since their abduction.
"When will they overtake us?" she asked in French in order that Idris should not understand them.
"I do not know. It may be to-day; perhaps to-morrow; perhaps after two or three days."
"But we will not ride back on camels?"
"No. We will ride only as far as the Nile, and afterwards go by way of the Nile to El-Wasta."
"That is good! oh, good!"
Poor Nell, who had previously loved these rides, had evidently now had enough of them.
"By way of the Nile—to El-Wasta and to papa!" she began to repeat in a sleepy voice.
As at the previous stop she did not enjoy a full sound sleep, she now fell into that deep sleep which after fatigue comes towards morning. In the meantime the Bedouins drove the camels without a rest and Stas observed that they were making their way towards the interior of the desert.
So, desiring to shake Idris' confidence that he would be able to elude the pursuit, and at the same time to show him that he himself relied upon it as a dead certainty, he said:
"You are driving away from the Nile and from Bahr Yûsuf, but that won't help you, for of course they will not seek you on the banks where villages lie side by side, but in the interior of the desert."
And Idris asked:
"How do you know that we are driving away from the Nile, since the banks cannot be seen from here?"
"Because the sun, which is in the eastern part of heaven, is warming our backs; that means we have turned to the west."
