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Updated: June 20, 2025
I will go forward to the river, and see that the boat is ready and that our friends are prepared for us. I shall come back after dark." They gathered the stones quickly and made a low wall about a foot high; within this wall Feversham and Trench laid themselves down upon the ground with a water-skin and their rifles at their sides. "You have dates, too," said Abou Fatma. "Yes."
The Fatma untied, and followed her down. And the night came, and still they floated on broadside under the stars. Nigel was now sleeping, and Meyer Isaacson was watching. And in a cabin close by a woman was staring at her face in a little glass set in the lid of a gilded box, was staring, with desperation at her heart. Hartley had said he believed she knew of the sudden collapse of her beauty.
But as he spoke he heard the sound of galloping horsemen, and almost immediately an Emir, on a magnificent animal, followed by a dozen Dervishes, dashed up. "Mahmud!" the woman cried, as she rose to her feet; "it is I, Fatma!" Mahmud gave a cry of joy, and waved his hand to his followers, who had already pointed their rifles at Gregory. "These have saved me, my lord," the woman went on.
In the midst of her grief Fatma retained her woman's curiosity, and on hearing the youth's voice, cast one glance at him over her father's shoulder. The first impression seemed not unfavourable. She eyed his slender form as he stood leaning on his sword, and gradually ceased her sobbing. She even raised herself and took hold of the Caliph's arm.
He had related how he had fallen in with Abou Fatma at Suakin, how he had planned the recovery of the letters, how the two men had travelled together as far as Obak, and since Abou Fatma dared not go farther, how he himself, driving his grey donkey, had gone on alone to Berber.
Then in his turn he rose, and hastily. When Harry Feversham had set out from Obak six days before to traverse the fifty-eight miles of barren desert to the Nile, this grey donkey had carried his water-skins and food. Abou Fatma drove the donkey down amongst the trees, and fastening it to a stem examined its shoulders.
Although a lady of great moral courage, and accustomed from infancy to self-control, she felt, on first beholding her timid little daughter, strongly disposed to seize Fatma by the hair of the head, and use her as a bludgeon wherewith to fell her Algerine mother; but, remembering the dignity of her position as, in some sort, a reflected representative of the British Empire in these parts, and also recalling to mind the aptitude of Algerine gentlemen to tie up in sacks and drown obstreperous Algerine ladies, she restrained herself, bit her lips, and said nothing.
They dismounted, and all that day they lay hidden behind a belt of shrubs upon some high ground and watched the road and the people like specks moving along it. They came down and crossed it in the darkness, and for the rest of that night travelled hard towards the river. As the day broke Abou Fatma again bade them halt.
He had lost his way amongst the sandhills of Obak on the evening of the second day, and had wandered vainly, with his small store of dates and water exhausted, until he had stumbled and lay prone, parched and famished and enfeebled, with the bitter knowledge that Abou Fatma and the Wells were somewhere within a mile of the spot on which he lay.
Abou Fatma had not been Gordon's body-servant for nothing; he had been taught during his service to read. He unfolded the note, and this is what was written: "The houses which were once Berber are destroyed, and a new town of wide streets is building.
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