heir 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