There was nothing to show them as they journeyed onwards that they were not on the very spot that they had passed at sunset upon the evening before.  The region of fantastic black hills and orange sand which bordered the river had long been left behind, and everywhere now was the same brown, rolling, gravelly plain, the ground-swell with the shining rounded pebbles upon its surface, and the occasional little sprouts of sage-green camel-grass.  Behind and before it extended, to where far away in front of them it sloped upwards towards a line of violet hills.  The sun was not high enough yet to cause the tropical shimmer, and the wide landscape, brown with its violet edging, stood out with a hard clearness in that dry, pure air.  The long caravan straggled along at the slow swing of the baggage-camels.  Far out on the flanks rode the vedettes, halting at every rise, and peering backwards with their hands shading their eyes.  In the distance their spears and rifles seemed to stick out of them, straight and thin, like needles in knitting.

“How far do you suppose we are from the Nile?” asked Cochrane.  He rode with his chin on his shoulder and his eyes straining wistfully to the eastern skyline.

“A good fifty miles,” Belmont answered.

“Not so much as that,” said the Colonel.  “We could not have been moving more than fifteen or sixteen hours, and a camel does not do more than two and a half miles an hour unless it is trotting.  That would only give about forty miles, but still it is, I fear, rather far for a rescue.  I don’t know that we are much the better for this postponement.  What have we to hope for?  We may just as well take our gruel.”

“Never say die!” cried the cheery Irishman.  “There’s plenty of time between this and mid-day.  Hamilton and Hedley of the Camel Corps are good boys, and they’ll be after us like a streak.  They’ll have no baggage-camels to hold them back, you can lay your life on that!  Little did I think, when I dined with them at mess that last night, and they were telling me all their precautions against a raid, that I should depend upon them for our lives.”

“Well, we’ll play the game out, but I’m not very hopeful,” said Cochrane.  “Of course, we must keep the best face we can before the women.  I see that Tippy Tilly is as good as his word, for those five niggers and the two brown Johnnies must be the men he speaks of.  They all ride together and keep well up, but I can’t see how they are going to help us.”

“I’ve got my pistol back,” whispered Belmont, and his square chin and strong mouth set like granite.  “If they try any games on the women, I mean to shoot them all three with my own hand, and then we’ll die with our minds easy.”

“Good man!” said Cochrane, and they rode on in silence.  None of them spoke much.  A curious, dreamy, irresponsible feeling crept over them.  It was as if they had all taken some narcotic drug—­the merciful anodyne which Nature uses when a great crisis has fretted the nerves too far.  They thought of their friends and of their past lives in the comprehensive way in which one views that which is completed.  A subtle sweetness mingled with the sadness of their fate.  They were filled with the quiet serenity of despair.