"Yes; well I expect that he has traced him, for it seems he is living with this Sheikh Burrachee, as he calls himself, who is as mad as a hatter, and he would not do that without a very strong reason." "Then the man who may be the Irish sheikh's son, or may be merely a magical illusion, and vanish or turn into a cat some fine morning, is your friend, I suppose?" said Barton. "Sure to be," replied Kavanagh; "though whether he has found Daireh yet is another question, and if, having found him, he has also got the will is still more problematical." "It would be hard lines if, after all that risk and trouble and running his man to earth, he should find the will destroyed or lost after all," said Barton. "I cannot believe in such ill-luck!" "No more should I three months ago," said Kavanagh; "but after getting to Khartoum just three days too late I am prepared for anything. What is the journey undertaken by Forsyth compared to the expedition fitted out, the persevering struggle against the forces of Nature, and the opposition of hosts of desperate foes for the purpose of rescuing Gordon? And that all that should fail seemed too bad to be possible. Yet so it was. I shall always be prepared for the worst for the rest of my life." CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. SWORD VERSUS BAYONET. After the skirmish which was fatal to poor Binks, and in which Grady effected his clever capture, the convoy had not been annoyed, save now and then by a distant shot which fell short; but in the afternoon of the day that Kavanagh got his information about Harry Forsyth, such as it was, out of the man Grady had taken prisoner, bullets fell closer again. They had entered a wide valley, and there was water on the south side of it, near the black rocks. No zereba was formed here, possibly because troops could not be spared to guard it, or the spot was considered too near the next wells, or there was good reason to know that there was no force of the enemy of any consequence in the neighbourhood. Whether it was the cause or not, this latter fact was probably the case, but there were individual sharp-shooters about who were inclined to make themselves a nuisance. Perched high up among fantastic blocks of stone, which would have tempted an artist to draw out his sketch-book, they got excellent shots at the party below them, and as there was no chance of a return, they being entirely concealed, and their presence merely indicated by the little puffs of white smoke which spurted out here and there, there was nothing to disturb their aim. For nothing spoils a rifleman's shooting like being exposed to accurate fire himself; which was probably the reason why duellists, who could perform wonders in the shooting gallery, used so often to miss each other at twelve paces in the days of single combat, when George the Fourth was Regent.