Kali trembled all over, for he well remembered his horrible slavery with the dervishes; he was certain that this was their camping place. To Stas, also, it seemed that this could not be any one else than Smain, and at first he too became terribly frightened. Only this was wanting! Besides Nell's fatal disease, the dervishes! And again slavery, and again a return to Fashoda or to Khartûm, under the hand of the Mahdi or the lash of Abdullahi. If they caught them Nell would die at once, while he would remain a slave the rest of the days of his life; and if he did escape of what use was liberty to him without Nell? How could he look into the eyes of his father or Mr. Rawlinson, if the dervishes after her death should fling her to the hyenas. He himself would not even be able to say where her grave was.
Such thoughts flitted through his head like lightning. Suddenly he felt an insurmountable desire to look at Nell, and directed his steps towards the tree. On the way he instructed Kali to extinguish the fire and not to dare to light it during the night, after which he entered the tree.
Nell was not sleeping and felt better. She at once communicated this news to Stas. Saba lay close to her and warmed her with his huge body, while she stroked his head lightly, smiling when he caught with his jaws the subtile dust of the decayed wood floating in the streak of light which the last rays of the setting sun formed in the tree. She apparently was in a better frame of mind, as after a while she addressed Stas with quite a lively mien.
"And perhaps I may not die."
"You surely will not die," Stas replied; "since after the second attack you feel stronger, the third will not come at all."
But she began to blink with her eyelids as if she were meditating over something and said:
"If I had bitter powders like that which made me feel so well after the night with the lions—do you remember?—then I would not think the least bit of dying not even so much!"
And she indicated upon her little finger just how little in that case she would be prepared to die.
"Ah!" Stas declared, "I do not know what I would not give for a pinch of quinine."
And he thought that if he had enough of it, he would at once treat Nell with two powders, even, and then he would wrap her in plaids, seat her before him on a horse, and start immediately in a direction opposite to the one in which the camp of the dervishes was located.