"Yes, man, now. There are rifles and ammunition buried near the camels, provisions and water kept in readiness. We travel by Metemneh, where fresh camels wait, from Metemneh to Berber. There we cross the Nile; camels are waiting for us five miles from Berber. From Berber we ride in over the Kokreb pass to Suakin."
"When?" exclaimed Trench. "Oh, when, when?"
"When I have strength enough to sit a horse for ten miles, and a camel for a week," answered Feversham. "How soon will that be? Not long, Trench, I promise you not long," and he rose up from the ground.
"As you get up," he continued, "glance round. You will see a man in a blue linen dress, loitering between us and the gaol. As we came past him, he made me a sign. I did not return it. I shall return it on the day when we escape."
"He will wait?"
"For a month. We must manage on one night during that month to escape from the House of Stone. We can signal him to bring help. A passage might be made in one night through that wall; the stones are loosely built."
They walked a little farther and came to the water's edge. There amid the crowd they spoke again of their escape, but with the air of men amused at what went on about them.
"There is a better way than breaking through the wall," said Trench, and he uttered a laugh as he spoke and pointed to a prisoner with a great load upon his back who had fallen upon his face in the water, and encumbered by his fetters, pressed down by his load, was vainly struggling to lift himself again. "There is a better way. You have money?"
"Ai, ai!" shouted Feversham, roaring with laughter, as the prisoner half rose and soused again. "I have some concealed on me. Idris took what I did not conceal."
"Good!" said Trench. "Idris will come to you to-day or to-morrow. He will talk to you of the goodness of Allah who has brought you out of the wickedness of the world to the holy city of Omdurman. He will tell you at great length of the peril of your soul and of the only means of averting it, and he will wind up with a few significant sentences about his starving family. If you come to the aid of his starving family and bid him keep for himself fifteen dollars out of the amount he took from you, you may get permission to sleep in the zareeba outside the prison. Be content with that for a night or two. Then he will come to you again, and again you will assist his starving family, and this time you will ask for permission for me to sleep in the open too. Come! There's Idris shepherding us home."