e
led the party in pursuit. Misfortune may have happened; they may have
lost their way and all perished from thirst, though it would be strange
indeed were none able to make their way back to the oasis."

"What think you we had better do, sheik? This gives us some indication
at least of a direction in which my brother was taken."

The sheik sat for some minutes without answering. "It is difficult," he
said at last; "this sheik El Bakhat is, as I have told you, a wanderer.
I have heard of him though I have never met him. His father was a
powerful sheik, but as a young man El Bakhat killed the son of another
sheik of the same tribe and fled. Later on he gathered a few followers
and was in the service of the slave-dealers who go down to the great
lakes. Of late years, since Gordon broke up the slave-trade, he has
returned at times and remained for weeks and sometimes for months in the
part of the country occupied by his tribe, for it is so many years now
since he killed his man that vengeance is no longer hot against him. He
has the name of being a headstrong man, and indeed he must be so or he
would never have embroiled himself with the Mahdi's people, for if he
had been driven out of his oasis he would know that there is no safety
for him anywhere near here; but where he has gone to no man could say.
One might as well try to follow the flight of a vulture. He may have
gone down near the coast; he may have made his way to the confines of
Abyssinia; he may have journeyed away towards the lakes where Emin Pasha
still rules in the name of Egypt. There is just one chance, he may be
hiding in the desert, and before he starts on a long journey he may
return to the oasis or may send a messenger to see if it is still
occupied by the Mahdi's men. I think that our best chance is to proceed
thither at once, and to wait there for a while to see if any come from
him. If at the end of a fortnight or three weeks none come we can then
decide in which direction to set out upon the search again."

This proposal seemed to Rupert to offer more prospect of success than
any other, and on the following morning the caravan started, the camels
now carrying scarce half the weight with which they had left Korti. As
the sheik had learned from his kinsman the name of the oasis to which
the troop had been sent, he had no difficulty in obtaining from some of
the tribesmen in the city precise directions as to the route to be
pursued, and ten days afte