"Well, I daresay you are right," said the professor; "your black skin is a passport anywhere. But you must act at once." "If I can," said Frank gravely. "There must be no undue haste." "There I don't agree with you, my dear boy," said the professor, "for these Emirs, even if they have homes in the city, are here to-day and gone to-morrow, in these warlike times. They are wandering people, and it would be horrible to awaken some morning and find that poor Hal was gone." "But we could trace him now," said the doctor warmly. "Hah! One begins to breathe freely now that there is a bit of blue sky among the clouds." "Well, perhaps you are right, Frank," said the professor, in a more satisfied tone. "The lead belongs to you too after this discovery, but you must be careful, lad." "Try and trust me," was the reply; "but even now I am ready to think it was all a dream." "Here," cried the professor, "let us tell the Sheikh and poor Sam," and hurrying to the window he beckoned both in from the grounds, where the Sheikh was seeing to his treasured camels and Sam was looking on. "Then hadn't I better begin to pack up at once, gentlemen?" said the latter eagerly, after he had been twice checked in his exuberant joy. "Begin to pack up?" said the professor wonderingly. "What for?" "To get back into a Christian country, sir," said Sam warmly. "We've found Mr Harry, and he's alive. Let's be off at once, I say. I haven't grumbled, gentlemen, and I ain't never said a word, but I've gone to bed every night--if you can say that thing they calls a anger reb is a bed--every night feeling wondering like that I've got a head left to put on the pillow. Ugh! It's a horrible place, where no one's safe for ten minutes together. Hadn't I better begin to pack?" "When we have my brother safe," said Frank, smiling. "I'm afraid, Sam," he added sadly, "that we have a good deal to do yet before we start." "Yes," said the Sheikh gravely, "and the young Excellency must take more care than ever. If there was the slightest suspicion that we were here to take his brother away all our heads would fall." CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. FRESH GIFTS. Fortunately for Frank's plans the Emirs who led the late arrivals of forces took up their residence right at the other end of the city, outside which their savage followers were for the most part encamped, and in the various rides about the place which the young man had with his companion none of them were encountered, though men of another tribe were. For it was evident that forces were being mustered largely with Omdurman as a centre--a fact which gave strength to the rumours the Sheikh brought in daily that the combined English and Egyptian forces were steadily coming up the Nile. But to Frank these rumours regarding the army were as if they did not exist. His whole being was concentrated upon the one aim--to obtain an interview with his brother; and a week had passed with this apparently as far off as ever.