“Yes, Excellency, I know,” said the Sheikh slowly; “but it is so long in coming, and while they are waiting to be freed from the horrible tyranny of the Mahdi and his successor, the people wither away and die.”
The old man looked at Frank as he spoke, and the young man gave him an approving nod, after which they rode on through the squalor and horrors of the place till the road grew more straight and wide, the hovels fewer. Then the filth and misery grew scarcer, patches of cultivated land appeared, from which weary-eyed faces looked up, half wondering, here and there, but only to sink listlessly again as their owners toiled on, with taskmasters ready to urge them on with their labour, as they tortured their sluggish oxen toiling at water-wheel or grinding at a mill.
But for the most part the Baggaras’ slaves allowed the passers-by to go unnoticed, never once lifting their eyes from the ground.
As the party rode slowly on, their eyes carefully searched the buildings they passed in these outskirts of the town, till they reached the entrance where they first arrived, and soon after were winding their way in and out of the narrow streets till they came to their portion of the Emir’s palace, and passed the guarded gate, to thankfully throw themselves upon the rugs of their shadowy room, hot, weary, and choked with dust.
“Well,” said the Hakim, as soon as their guards were out of hearing, “good news?”
“No,” said Frank, “the worst. We might go wandering in and out of this desolation of sordid hovels and crumbling huts for years, and see no sign of the poor fellow.”
“And perhaps pass the place again and again,” added the professor. “We are going the wrong way to work. What do you say, Ibrahim?”
“Thy servant fears that it is useless to go searching in such a way as this,” replied the old Sheikh. “The city is so big—there are so many thousands crowding the place.”
“Then what can we do?” said Frank wearily.
“Only try to get news of a white slave who was taken at Khartoum, Excellency,” said the old man calmly. “I am working, but I fear to ask too much, for fear that I might do harm.”