"What if the Arabs should change their course and fall in with us again?" asked Moses. "No fear o' that, seein' that Mohammed himself gave us our sailin' orders, an' laid our course for us; but it would never do to fall in wi' other bands, so I proposes that we cast anchor where we are, for there's pretty good holdin' ground among them bushes, keep quiet all day, an' travel only at night. I've got the krect bearin's just now, so w'en the stars come out we'll be able to fix on one layin' in the right direction, and clap on all sail, slow and aloft--stu'n s'ls, sky-scrapers, an' all the rest on it." "A good plan, Jack," said Armstrong, "but what if it should come cloudy and blot out the stars?" "Besides," added Miles, "you forget that men of the desert are skilled in observing signs and in following tracks. Should any of them pass near this little clump of bushes, and observe our footsteps going towards it, they will at once come to see if we are still here." Molloy put his head on one side and looked perplexed for a moment. "Never mind. Let 'em come," he said, with a sudden look of sagacity, "we'll circumwent 'em. There's nothin' like circumwention w'en you've got into a fix. See here. We'll dig a hole in a sandbank big enough to hold us all, an' we'll cut a big bush an' stick it in front of the hole so as they'll never see it. We can keep a bright look-out, you know, an' if anything heaves in sight on the horizon, down we go into the hole, stick up the bush, an there you are--all safe under hatches till the enemy clears off." "But they will trace our footsteps up to the hole or the bush," said Miles, "and wonder why they can trace them no further. What then?" Again the seaman fell into perplexed meditation, out of which he emerged with a beaming smile. "Why, then, my lad, we'll bamboozle 'em. There's nothin' like bamboozlement w'en circumwention fails. Putt the two together an' they're like a hurricane in the tropics, carries all before it! We'll bamboozle 'em by runnin' for an hour or two all over the place, so as no mortal man seein' our footprints will be able to tell where we comed from, or what we've bin a-doin' of." "You don't know the men of the desert, Jack," rejoined Miles, with a laugh. "They'd just walk in a circle round the place where you propose to run about and bamboozle them, till they found where our tracks _entered_ this bit of bush. Then, as they'd see no tracks _leaving_ it, of course they'd know that we were still there. D'you see?" "That's a puzzler for you, Jack," remarked Moses, as he watched the perplexed expression looming up again like a cloud on the sailor's face. "By no manner o' means," retorted Molloy, with sudden gravity. "I sees my way quite clear out o' that. You remember the broad track, not half a mile off from where we now sit?" "Yes; made I suppose by a pretty big band o' some sort crossin' the desert," said Moses.