It was only natural that Jones's guess as to the direction in which lay Atbara should be somewhat out; it would have been strange indeed if he had guessed right. As a matter of fact, his attempt to do so was by no means a bad one; for, had he directed his steps but a point or two less towards the east, he would have hit off the English position nicely, and would soon have encountered the search-party which presently came out to find him, or have been overtaken by some other friendly company hurrying forward from Berber towards the scene of operations at the junction of Atbara and Nile.
Luckily Jones had sandwiches in his pocket, though he would rather have had a gallon or two of water. The drop or so of whisky in his flask did nothing to assuage his thirst. His throat was parched with the sand, his tongue dry and hot and gritty. He could scarcely see; his ears were clogged. Jones plodded along, now praying for help in his most serious plight—he knew that it was serious, though he scarcely realized perhaps how serious; now recalling his dream and laughing at it; now thinking of every conceivable thing that would serve to blot out the disagreeable present, if but for a few minutes.
Meanwhile the sun had come out, and was blazing away in a manner which made life under its direct rays an unpleasant and almost impossible function. Soon it became unbearable. The wind had dropped, and the sand ceased to fly—a mercy for which Jones felt devoutly grateful. But the heat! The poor lost bimbashi scooped a hole in the ground, piling the displaced sand as high as he could, and lying behind it, in order to get a little shade for his face; and there he lay and sweltered until the sun climbed too high, and drove him out of his shelter. Then he travelled on, his brain on fire, until the burning disc above him had sunk sufficiently to allow him to repeat his expedient of earlier in the day; and now he lay half asleep, half comatose, until the cool of evening revived him, and he rose and plodded forward once more.
"I shall go on till I drop, anyway!" soliloquized Bimbashi Jones, like the brave man he was; and then, because he was still a very young man, and because he felt, as any one justly might do under the circumstances, extremely sorry for himself, he shed a few tears of pity over the melancholy fate which impended. "I might have done rather well," he reflected. "I had made a good start—every one said so; but misfortune dogs me wherever I go!" and Jones thought of his disappointment in England, of his illness at Cairo, of this crowning disaster; and he shed a few more consoling tears.
That night Jones, plodding obstinately forward, stumbling, weary, only half conscious, nearly dead with thirst, struck suddenly into country of a different character from the unbroken sand plain through which he had been travelling up to this moment. There was scrub to be pushed through, mimosa bushes, and other greenery.
"Thanks be to God!" exclaimed the bimbashi, for even his baked brain was able to comprehend the significance of the change. "I am coming to the Nile!"
It was not the Nile but the Atbara which Jones had struck well above the Anglo-Egyptian portion; but, oh! the joy of that first big drink of nasty water, and the long-continued, delicious sluicing of the burning head, wherein the fire had raged without ceasing for a twelve-hour round, and would scarcely now be extinguished even though Jones would bring the whole flood of the Atbara to bear upon it.
Then Jones finished his sandwiches and felt a man once more, though a weary one. He thanked Heaven for mercies received, and lay down to sleep until wakened by—yes, actually by the cold. He must move on.
How different the travelling was now! He would not leave the river again, the wanderer wisely resolved. He would follow it until the British position was reached; it could not be far now.
Poor bimbashi! The British fort lay behind him, and he was speeding away in the wrong direction—into the arms, indeed, of Mahmoud, had he only known it.