to sleep! I do not even secure my rifle! Quest, I shall never
forgive myself."

"No good worrying," Quest sighed. "The question is how best to get out of
the mess. What's the next move, anyway?"

The Professor glanced towards the sun and took a small compass from his
pocket. He pointed across the desert.

"That's exactly our route," he said, "but I reckon we still must be two
days from the Mongars, and how we are going to get there ourselves, much
more get the women there, without camels, I don't know. There are no
wells, and I don't believe those fellows have left us a single tin of
water."

"Any chance of falling in with a caravan?" Quest enquired.

"Not one in a hundred," the Professor replied gloomily. "If we were only
this short distance out of Port Said, and on one of the recognised trade
routes, we should probably meet half-a-dozen before mid-day. Here we are
simply in the wilds. The way we are going leads to nowhere and finishes in
an utterly uninhabitable jungle."

"Think we'd better turn round and try and bisect one of the trade routes?"
Quest suggested.

The Professor shook his head.

"We should never know when we'd struck it. There are no milestones or
telegraph wires. We shall have to put as brave a face on it as possible,
and push on."

Laura put her head out of the tent in which the two women had slept.

"Say, where's breakfast?" she exclaimed. "I can't smell the coffee."

They turned and approached her silently. The two girls, fully dressed,
came out of the tent as they approached.

"Young ladies," the Professor announced, "I regret to say that a
misfortune has befallen us, a misfortune which we shall be able, without a
doubt, to surmount, but which will mean a day of hardship and much
inconvenience."

"Where are the camels?" Lenora asked breathlessly.

"Gone!" Quest replied.

"And the Arabs?"

"Gone with them--we are left high and dry," Quest explained. "Those
fellows are as superstitious as they can be, and Hassan's death has given
them the scares. They have gone back to Port Said."

"And what is worse," the Professor added, with a groan, "they have taken
with them all our stores, our rifles and our water."

"How far are we from the Mongar Camp?" Lenora asked.

"About a day's tramp," Quest replied quickly. "We may reach there by
nightfall."

"Then let's start walking at once, before it gets any hotter," Lenora
suggested.

Quest patted her on the back. They made a close sear