After forty minutes' halt, Cochrane, Johnny, and the Old Man loaded themselves up with the chargals and all except three of the water-bottles, and leaving their packs behind set forth on their urgent quest for Grunt and Ellis. The remaining three divided up the watches between them until dawn. Nobby and Looney had a midnight bathe, finding one place even deep enough to swim in; but it was chilly work drying on a couple of silk handkerchiefs sewn together which served as towel, scarf, or sunshade indiscriminately. Sleep was impossible, for the bank swarmed with mosquitoes and sand-flies, so after a while Nobby went a-fishing with a sultana for bait, but without result. At 2 A.M. the monotony was broken by the arrival of a dog. It stood a few yards away and proceeded to bark for about ten minutes. That light we had seen ahead, and which was now close by, was probably a village fire; so the three just lay low. At length, to their relief, the owner of the beast came and called it off, not worrying to find out at what it was barking. In the meantime Cochrane and the two others had to get back to the nullah where Grunt and Ellis had been left. They recrossed the railway embankment and eventually struck a nullah. As they proceeded this petered out, and the three started wandering over the country, whistling now and again, but receiving no answer. At 2.45 A.M. they again struck the embankment and walked along it for an hour, but could not pick up their bearings. Accordingly they halted and waited for the light. After being heated by the strenuous marching, they soon began to shiver violently with the cold and dosed themselves with quinine. As prearranged in the event of the others not having returned, Nobby, Perce, and Looney at dawn moved off from the pool into hiding in the hills to the west. The packs of the search-party were left concealed under a ledge of the bank and covered with reeds and grass. From the top of the ridge they overlooked the desolate country traversed the night before. Close below them stood an Arab encampment with its black camel-hair tents, from which both the light and dog had doubtless proceeded. A few ponies grazed near the water, now seen to be one of a series of pools lying stagnant in an otherwise dry river bed. A man appeared leading a string of camels. The three were thinking that little prospect remained of joining up again that day, when suddenly they saw figures hurrying across the plain, and recognised with relief that they were Cochrane, the Old Man, and Johnny.