One evening about sunset there was a vehement beating of tom-toms, and a body of Baggara Arabs, some on horseback, others on camels, but many on foot—a fierce and jabbering mob, all but nude—though well-armed with bright-bladed Solingen swords and excellent Remington rifles, passed the zereba, bound for some point of attack; and the Sheikh Moussa, with every man he could muster, joined them in hot haste.
So great had been the bustle and hurry of their departure that Malcolm Skene, to his astonishment, found himself forgotten, overlooked; and, full of hopeful thoughts, he lay quiet and still in the poor apartment allotted to him, watching the strange constellations and stars unknown to Europe through the unglazed aperture that served as a window, and listening to the silence—if we may use such a paradox—a silence that seemed to be broken only by the pulsations of his own heart, as hope grew up in it suddenly, and he thought that, considering a kind of crisis that had come in his fate, now or never was the time to make a stroke for liberty, and to elude, if possible, the few Arabs who were left to watch the gates in the dense mimosa hedge that surrounded the zereba.
To elude them—but how?
The stars were singularly bright even for that hemisphere; but there was no moon as yet, fortunately, and softly quitting his hut, he looked sharply about the 'compound,' as it would be called in India, and found himself alone there, unnoticed and unseen. He drew near the hedge in the hope of finding, as he ultimately did, an opening in that barrier, a thinner portion of its dense branches, close to the ground, and at once he proceeded to creep through.
How easy it seemed of accomplishment just then; but when the zereba was full of armed men, and watchers and sentinels were numerous, the attempt would have been useless.
Slowly, softly, and scarcely making a twig or a thorn crack, he drew himself through on his hands and face ere many minutes passed; minutes? they could not have been more than five, if so many; but with life trembling in the balance, to poor Skene they seemed as ages.
At last he was through!
He was outside that hated place of confinement, every feature of which he knew but too well, and every detail of which he loathed; and yet he was not quite free. Keen eyes might see him after all, and every moment he expected to hear an alarm.
He thanked Heaven for the absence of the moonlight, and, favoured by the obscurity, crept on his hands and knees for a considerable distance ere he ventured to stand erect, to draw a long breath, and with a prayer of hope and thankfulness on his lips, set out at a run towards the Nile.
By the oft-studied landmarks he knew well in what direction the great river lay, a few miles off, however.