258 WITH KITCHENEE IN THE SOUDAN He knew the desert now and its fierce inhabitants. He could picture the battle, and since the fight at Omdurman he had been able to see before him the wild rush on the Egyptian square, the mad confusion, the charge of a handful of white officers, and the one white man going off with the black battalion that held together. If, then, it was a shock to him to know how his father had died, how vastly greater would it have been to his mother ! She had pictured him as dying suddenly, fighting to the last and scarce bonscious of pain till he received a fatal wound. She had said to Gregory that it was better to think of his father as having died thus than lingering in hopeless slavery like Heufeld ; but it would have been agony to her to know that he did suffer for two years, that he had then struggled on through all dangers to Khartoum, and was on his way back full of hope and love for her when he was treacherously murdered.

The village sheik met him as he went down. You have found nothing, my lord?’’

Nothing but a few old papers,” he said. “You will report well of us, I hope, to the great English commander ? ” “ I shall certainly tell him that you did all in your power to aid me.”

' He walked down towards the river. One of the men who had gone on while he had been speaking to the sheik, ran back to meet him.

“ There is a steamer coming up the river, my lord.” “ That is fortunate indeed,” Gregory exclaimed. “ I had intended to sleep here to-night, and to bargain with the sheik for donkeys or camels to take us back. This will save two days.”

Two or three native craft were fastened up to the shore 5 waiting for a breeze to set in strong enough to take them up.

Gregory at once arranged with one of them to put his party on board the steamer in their boat. In a quarter of an hour the gun-boat approached, and they rowed out to meet her.