"But they don't mean anything, Ibrahim. They call each other all sorts of names too."
"That so," Ibrahim said, nodding his head, "very funny names; often call each other blooming something or other. Ibrahim always carry a dictionary; he look out blooming; blooming same as blossoming, means plants out in flower. Ibrahim could not make head or tail of them. Lots of other words, bad words, Ibrahim could not understand."
"They do not mean anything, Ibrahim; it is just an ugly way of talking. They all mean the same, 'very much' or 'very great,' nothing more or less. Now we had better go on talking Arabic."
"No words like those in Arabic," Ibrahim said. "Arab man say what he wants to say, proper words."
"I don't know, Ibrahim. When I have seen Arabs quarrelling they shout and scream at each other, and though I don't know what they say I should think they were using pretty strong expressions whatever they may be."
"Yes, when angry call bad names, one understand that, my lord; but white soldier and sailor use bad words when not angry at all."
"It is habit, Ibrahim, and a very bad habit; but, as I tell you, it doesn't really mean anything. You see we have turned east," he went on in Arabic.
Ibrahim nodded. "Not go straight to Metemmeh," he said. "I expect the sheik is going round by Berber."
Such proved to be the case, for when they halted for the night the sheik explained to Rupert, by means of Ibrahim, that he intended to follow the course of the river for the present. He should keep on the edge of the desert until they had passed the point at which the boat expedition had arrived. There would be no chance of the prisoner having been brought down anywhere in the neighbourhood of the British, but as most of the tribes had sent contingents to fight the whites as they advanced against Metemmeh, the captive might be anywhere beyond the point reached by the expedition, and it would be better to search regularly on their way up, as they might otherwise leave him behind them.
Another advantage was that the regular caravan track left the Nile a hundred miles below Dongola, and struck across the desert to the elbow of the river below Berber, and that when he got upon that route it would be supposed that he had travelled all along by it, and he would thereby avoid the suspicion of having been trading with the British camp. Rupert quite agreed with the justice of this reasoning. The sheik selected a route that led them through a desolate country, and they reached the elbow of the Nile without encountering any natives, save two or three small parties at wells, from the time they left camp. This course was dictated not only by the reason that he had given Rupert, but by a fear for the safety of the caravan.