“We have knives,” remarked Gebhr.
“Try them, but remember that you also have a throat, which the dog may tear open before you have time to stab him.”
“Then what are we to do?”
Chamis raised his eyebrows.
“Why do you want to kill the dog? Even if you bury him in the sand the hyenas will dig him out, and the pursuers will find his bones and know that we have not gone along the Nile, but have crossed over to this side. So let him follow us. Whenever the Bedouins go for water, and we are hidden in a ravine, you may be sure that the dog will stay with the children. Allah!”
“It is well he caught up to us here; otherwise he would have led the pursuers on our tracks as far as Barbary. You will not need to feed him, for if he is not satisfied with the remnants of our meals he will not go hungry; he can always catch a hyena or a jackal. Let him alone, I tell you, and waste no more time chattering.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Idris.
“If I am right, I will give him water, so that he will not run to the Nile and be seen in the villages.”
Thus was Saba’s fate decided, and after having rested a little and had a good meal he lapped up a dish of water, and thus refreshed, followed the caravan with renewed energy.
They now rode over a tableland, on which the wind had made furrows of sand, and from which reached wide stretches of desert. The sky assumed the hue of a pearl mussel-shell. Light clouds gathered in the east, shining like opals, and then melting into golden tints.