“What do you mean to do?” asked the professor.
The Hakim was silent, standing leaning over his patient, deep in thought, while his friends waited patiently for him to speak.
It was no longer the calm, easy-going companion now, but the earnest student of the human frame, straining every mental fibre to the encounter in this emergency.
A minute later he had turned to Frank, and spoke to him earnestly, with the result that the young man shook his head.
“Yes, I know,” said the doctor; “you are unprepared; the difficulties seem out here insuperable; but a man’s life is at stake, so is our reputation amongst these people, for one failure will balance a hundred cures, just as at home one evil deed stands out strongly against so many good which pass unnoticed. It is barely possible, but we must try.”
Frank stood for a few moments thinking, and then turned his eyes upon those of his friend.
“Think, my dear boy,” said the latter; “it may be a step nearer to finding Hal.”
Frank still remained silent. He needed no such stimulus as that, though; he was only shrinking for fear that he would fail in his part of the experiment that was to be tried.
At last his face lit-up, and signing to the professor and the Sheikh to follow him he hurried back to their part of the palace, where a leathern case that had travelled so far on the big camel, and remained unopened, was rapidly unstrapped, and one by one the carefully packed portions of some new scientific apparatus were undone and arranged upon one of the rugs placed for the purpose.
Frank worked hard, and the professor aided him with all the energy he could throw into the task, first one and then the other uttering a word or two of satisfaction to find that everything was intact.