"Yes, yes," replied Abou Fatma, "ammunition and rifles and revolvers." He led the way to a spot about twenty yards from the camels, where some long desert grass rustled about their legs. He stooped and dug into the soft sand with his hands.
"Here," he said.
Trench flung himself upon the ground beside him and scooped with both hands, making all the while an inhuman whimpering sound with his mouth, like the noise a foxhound makes at a cover. There was something rather horrible to Feversham in his attitude as he scraped at the ground on his knees, at the action of his hands, quick like the movements of a dog's paws, and in the whine of his voice. He was sunk for the time into an animal. In a moment or two Trench's fingers touched the lock and trigger of a rifle, and he became man again. He stood up quietly with the rifle in his hands. The other arms were unearthed, the ammunition shared.
"Now," said Trench, and he laughed with a great thrill of joy in the laugh. "Now I don't mind. Let them follow from Omdurman! One thing is certain now: I shall never go back there; no, not even if they overtake us," and he fondled the rifle which he held and spoke to it as though it lived.
Two of the Arabs mounted the old camels and rode slowly away to Omdurman. Abou Fatma and the other remained with the fugitives. They mounted and trotted northeastwards. No more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed since they had first halted at Abou Fatma's word.
All that night they rode through halfa grass and mimosa trees and went but slowly, but they came about sunrise on to flat bare ground broken with small hillocks.
"Are the Effendi tired?" asked Abou Fatma. "Will they stop and eat? There is food upon the saddle of each camel."
"No; we can eat as we go."
Dates and bread and a draught of water from a zamsheyeh made up their meal, and they ate it as they sat their camels. These, indeed, now that they were free of the long desert grass, trotted at their quickest pace. And at sunset that evening they stopped and rested for an hour. All through that night they rode and the next day, straining their own endurance and that of the beasts they were mounted on, now ascending on to high and rocky ground, now traversing a valley, and now trotting fast across plains of honey-coloured sand. Yet to each man the pace seemed always as slow as a funeral. A mountain would lift itself above the rim of the horizon at sunrise, and for the whole livelong day it stood before their eyes, and was never a foot higher or an inch nearer. At times, some men tilling a scanty patch of sorghum would send the fugitives' hearts leaping in their throats, and they must make a wide detour; or again a caravan would be sighted in the far distance by the keen eyes of Abou Fatma, and they made their camels kneel and lay crouched behind a rock, with their loaded rifles in their hands. Ten miles from Abu Klea a relay of fresh camels awaited them, and upon these they travelled, keeping a day's march westward of the Nile. Thence they passed through the desert country of the Ababdeh, and came in sight of a broad grey tract stretching across their path.
"The road from Berber to Merowi," said Abou Fatma. "North of it we turn east to the river. We cross that road to-night; and if God wills, to-morrow evening we shall have crossed the Nile."