“Here it is!” cried the sailor, making a heave with his broad back. “I say—it won’t move! Ah, I wasn’t rightly under it. Yo! heave-o!” Up went the door with a crash, and the soft moonlight streamed in upon them.
A few seconds more and they stood outside the hut—apparently the only living beings in all that region, which had been so full of human life but a few minutes before.
“Now we must lose no time in getting away from this place, and covering as much of the desert as we can during the night,” said Miles, “for it strikes me that we’ll have to lie quiet during the day, for fear of being seen and chased.”
They spoke together in whispers for a few minutes, deciding the course they meant to pursue. Then Molloy shouldered the provision bag, Miles grasped his official lance—the only weapon they had among them,—and off they set on their journey across the desert, like a ship entering on an unknown sea, without the smallest idea of how far they were from the frontier of Egypt, and but a vague notion of the direction in which they ought to go.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
A Horrible Situation.
All that night our fugitives walked steadily in the direction of their guiding-star, until the dawn of day began to absorb its light. Then they selected a couple of prominent bushes on the horizon, and, by keeping these always in their relative positions, were enabled to shape their course in what they believed to be the right direction. By repeating the process continuously they were enabled to advance in a fairly straight line.
Molloy, as we have said, carried the provision bag, and, although it was a very heavy one, he refused to let his comrades relieve him of it until breakfast-time. Then it was discovered that inside of the large bag there were rolled tight up four smaller bags with shoulder-straps to them.