"You, Akab and Zimmah," continued the leader, "go by the hills ahead and find out what you can. As for us, we will keep our lips closed and our eyes and ears open. Abu Sofian is not yet so old that he has forgotten the signs of the wilderness."
The vast procession moved on again slowly and in a dead silence, broken only by the trampling of the beasts and the moans of the camels.
Presently, on coming near a spot which might be deemed hazardous ground, Abu Sofian ordered a halt and went forward himself, alone and on foot. With eye on the alert, ear on a tension to catch the slightest sound, and body bent downward to facilitate the closest scrutiny of the ground, the keen old man proceeded slowly, stepping with cat-like precision and quietness.
Suddenly he uttered an exclamation. A small object lay dark on the yellow sand. He picked it up. It was a date-stone. He examined it closely. It was slightly smaller than the stones of the ordinary fruit.
"A Medina date!" he exclaimed; "whoever has thrown it there!"
Going a few paces further, he found several similar ones thrown by the wayside. The trampling of the sand, too, showed that a considerable force had been on the road at no distant time.
He bent down again and directed his keen scrutiny on the road, then retraced his steps for a short distance. There were tracks pointing in both directions, but at one point the company seemed to have turned.
It was clear, then, that for some reason the force had been ordered to turn and go back for a distance, probably to await the caravan in some ravine, and that they were now not very far away. It was necessary, then, to be as expeditious as possible.
He hastily returned and gave the order that the route of the caravan be changed, and that the party should cross over the hills and proceed by a route close to the Red Sea until the place of danger was left behind.
This was accordingly done, and the long lines passed anxiously yet laboriously onward over flinty summits, down steep and rugged hill-sides, past rocky clefts and over barren desert spots peopled only by the echoes that rang from the mountain sides, until at last the sparkling waters of the Red Sea lay below, and the anxious travelers felt that, for the present at least, they were safe.