"There was nothing for it, therefore, but to show him the letter and let him read it. He still seemed only half convinced, but that sufficed.
"'It is strange,' he said, 'but Senussi-el-Mahdi, who knows all things, will decide, when he has put thee to the question. It may be that he will make thee welcome, and it may be that he will slit thy throat; but I must not slit it for him until I know his will. In the meantime hast thou not perchance some gift for me?'
"I unpacked a burnous from my baggage and handed it to him with a courteous inclination.
"He took it from me with as little ceremony as though it had been a contraband article detected at a custom-house; but he made a sign to his men, and they melted away as suddenly as they had come in sight.
"We hurried on, starting each morning before dawn, so as to travel quickly while the air was cool, until one day, when the dawn broke, suddenly almost as a flash of lightning, the gleaming walls of a city showed themselves in front of us.
"'It is Jarabub,' said my guides with a single voice, throwing themselves upon the ground to say their prayers.
"I told them to make haste with their devotions and come on; and in half an hour or so we had reached our goal, and were seeking admission at the city gates.
"Do you ask me to describe the city? Well, I should say that, from a distance, it looked not unlike a group of disused limekilns, and that the resemblance did not entirely disappear when one got close to it. But I had no time just then to observe it closely. The walls and the windows were crowded with black men dressed in white, and bawling questions in a language that I did not understand.
"It was my luck that there was a man in the crowd who knew the English language; for then I knew what line to take.
"'Voyons!' I said to myself. 'A black man who knows English knows also Englishmen, and is accustomed to be ordered, and not asked to do what is required.'