For Stas the days of worry, uneasiness and exertion had passed. They
had yet before them a month of travel to Mombasa and the road led
through the charming but unhealthy forest of Taveta; but how much
easier it was to travel now, with a numerous caravan well provided with
everything and over familiar trails, than formerly to stray in the
wilderness with only Kali and Mea. Besides, Captain Glenn was now
responsible for the journey. Stas rested and hunted. Aside from this,
having found among the implements of the caravan a chisel and hammers,
he was in the cooler hours engaged in chiseling upon a great gneiss
rock the inscription "Jeszcze Polska nie zginela,"* [* "Poland is not
yet lost." The title of the most popular Polish national
march.--_Translator's note_.] for he wished to leave some trace of
their sojourn in that region.

The Englishmen, to whom he translated the inscription, were astonished
that it never occurred to the boy to perpetuate his own name on that
rock. But he preferred to carve the words he had chosen.

He did not cease, however, to take care of Nell and awoke in her such
unbounded confidence that when Clary asked her whether she did not fear
the storms on the Red Sea, the little maid raised her beautiful, calm
eyes and only answered, "Stas will know what to do." Captain Glenn
claimed that truer evidence of what Stas was to the little one and
greater praise for the boy no one would be able to pronounce.

Though the first despatch to Pan Tarkowski at Port Said had been worded
with much care, it nevertheless created such a powerful sensation that
joy almost killed Nell's father. But Pan Tarkowski, though he was an
exceptionally self-controlled person, in the first moments after the
receipt of the despatch, knelt in prayer and began to beseech God that
the intelligence should not prove to be a delusion, a morbid chimera,
bred from sorrow, longing, and pain. Why, they had both toiled so hard
to learn that the children were even alive! Mr. Rawlinson had
despatched to the Sudan whole caravans, while Pan Tarkowski, disguised
as an Arab, had penetrated with the greatest danger to his life as far
as Khartum, but all was futile. The men who could have given any news
died of smallpox, of starvation, or perished during the continual
massacres, and of the children there was not the slightest clue. In the
end both fathers lost all hope and lived only on recollections, in the
deep conviction that here in life now