Hassan smiled widely.  Certainly the Englishman was mad, but he had a sporting fancy for mad Englishmen, a fancy that kept his pouch well filled.  He had not the smallest intention of letting this one out of his sight.

“We will go together, effendi,” he said.  “The price shall not be named between us until we return in peace.  But the effendi will need a disguise.  The Wandis have no love for the English.”

“Then I will go as your brother,” said Herne.

The Arab bowed low.

“As traders in spice,” he said, “we might, by the goodness of Allah, pass through to the Great Desert.  But we could not go with a large caravan, effendi, and we should take our lives in our hands.”

“Even so,” said the Englishman imperturbably.  “Let us waste no time!”

It had been his attitude throughout, and it had had its effect upon the men who had travelled with him.  They had come to look upon him with reverence, this mad Englishman, who was thus calmly preparing to risk his life for a man whose bones had probably whitened in the desert years before.  By sheer, indomitable strength of purpose Herne was accomplishing inch by inch the task that he had set himself.

A few days more found him traversing the wide, scrub-grown plateau that stretched to the mountains where the Wandis had their dwelling-place.  The journey was a bitter one, the heat intense, the difficulties of the way sometimes wellnigh insurmountable.  They carried water with them, but the need for economy was great, and Herne was continually possessed by a consuming thirst that he never dared to satisfy.

The party consisted of himself, Hassan, an Arab lad, and five natives.  The rest of his following he had left on the edge of civilization, encamped in the last oasis between the desert and the scrub, with orders to await his return.  If, as the Arab had suggested, he succeeded in pushing through to the farther desert, he would return by a more southerly route, giving Wanda as wide a berth as possible.

Thus ran his plans as, day after day, he pressed farther into the heart of the unknown country that the British had abandoned in despair over three years before.  They found it deserted, in some parts almost impenetrable, so dense was the growth of bush in all directions.  And yet there were times when it seemed to Herne that the sense of emptiness was but a superficial impression, as if unseen eyes watched them on that journey of endless monotony, as if the very camels knew of a lurking espionage, and sneered at their riders’ ignorance.

This feeling came to him generally at night, when he had partially assuaged the torment of thirst that gave him no peace by day, and his mind was more at leisure for speculation.  At such times, lying apart from his companions, wrapt in the immense silence of the African night, the conviction would rise up within him that every inch of their progress through that land of mystery was marked by a close observation, that even as he lay he was under surveillance, that the dense obscurity of the bush all about him was peopled by stealthy watchers whose vigilance was never relaxed.