With bows and suppliant sweepings of his hands the dragoman explained that the Christians were already full of doubt, and that it needed but a little more light of knowledge to guide them on to the path of Allah.  The two Emirs stroked their beards and gazed suspiciously at them.  Then Abderrahman spoke in his crisp, stern fashion to the dragoman, and the two strode away together.  An instant later the bugle rang out as a signal to mount.

“What he says is this,” Mansoor explained, as he rode in the middle of the prisoners.  “We shall reach the wells by mid-day, and there will be a rest.  His own Moolah, a very good and learned man, will come to give you an hour of teaching.  At the end of that time you will choose one way or the other.  When you have chosen, it will be decided whether you are to go to Khartoum or to be put to death.  That is his last word.”

“They won’t take ransom?”

“Wad Ibrahim would, but the Emir Abderrahman is a terrible man.  I advise you to give in to him.”

“What have you done yourself?  You are a Christian, too.”

Mansoor blushed as deeply as his complexion would allow.

“I was yesterday morning.  Perhaps I will be to-morrow morning.  I serve the Lord as long as what He ask seem reasonable; but this is very otherwise.”

He rode onwards amongst the guards with a freedom which showed that his change of faith had put him upon a very different footing to the other prisoners.

So they were to have a reprieve of a few hours, though they rode in that dark shadow of death which was closing in upon them.  What is there in life that we should cling to it so?  It is not the pleasures, for those whose hours are one long pain shrink away screaming when they see merciful Death holding his soothing arms out for them.  It is not the associations, for we will change all of them before we walk of our own free-wills down that broad road which every son and daughter of man must tread.  Is it the fear of losing the I, that dear, intimate I, which we think we know so well, although it is eternally doing things which surprise us?  Is it that which makes the deliberate suicide cling madly to the bridge-pier as the river sweeps him by?  Or is it that Nature is so afraid that all her weary workmen may suddenly throw down their tools and strike, that she has invented this fashion of keeping them constant to their present work?  But there it is, and all these tired, harassed, humiliated folk rejoiced in the few more hours of suffering which were left to them.

CHAPTER VII.