"Hamed," said I, "I will go slowly on with Zeki. Do you stop the man, and answer his questions, and in any case prevent him from seeing me close. You have the money on you?"
"Good; but march slowly!"
I rode on quietly with Zeki, hiding my face with my farda, so as not to be recognised as a white man.
"Hamed is greeting the man, and has made his camel kneel," said Zeki, looking back. After about twenty minutes, we saw the man remount his horse, and Hamed urging his camel on to rejoin us.
"You must thank God for our safety," he cried, as he came up. "The man is a friend of mine, Mukhal, a Sheikh, on his way to Dongola with camels to bring dates to Omdurman. He asked me where I was going with the 'white Egyptian.' The man has the eyes of a hawk."
"And what did you answer?"
"I adjured him as my friend to keep our secret, and gave him twenty Maria Theresa dollars. We Arabs are all a little avaricious. The man swore a sacred oath to me to hold his tongue if he happened to fall in with our pursuers; and his people are too far off to tell black from white. Urge the camels on; we have lost time."
At sunset, we passed the hills of Hobegi, and camped nearly an hour later in the open country about a day's journey west of the Nile, so as to give our exhausted animals some rest. We had been riding twenty-one hours without stopping, had eaten nothing all day, and only once drunk water. In spite of fatigue we ate bread and dates with a good appetite.
"We will feed our beasts and then get on," said my guide. "You are not tired?"
"No," I replied. "In Europe we say time is money. Here one might say time is life. Make haste."