"Everything," said the professor, "as I have left things again and again. Here is our position: I am known here, and it is no novelty for me to go upon an expedition with this old guide. So all we have to do is to eat our dinner in peace, and when Ibrahim comes, mount our beasts and go off in the moonlight and silently steal away through the further parts of the city, and in a very short time be swallowed up in the mysterious gloom, travelling onward over the sand." "All night?" said the doctor. "Yes, all night, and in good time in the morning we shall have reached the tents of the Sheikh, where we shall have an early meal and sleep. When we shall go on depends upon the preparations there. These will be extremely simple, but they will be sufficient. Make your minds easy, and throw all the arrangement of the journey upon Ibrahim and me. He will do his best, but as he said to me an hour ago, the success of our adventure must be left to fate." "But our preparations seem so small," said Frank uneasily. "Preparations for desert journeys are small from an Englishman's point of view. A man here takes his camel, a bag of meal and another of dates, with a waterskin to fill when it is more than a day's journey to the next well. The Sheikh expressed himself satisfied with our baggage, but in his eyes it is very large." "Well," said the doctor, "I have said very little, but I share Frank's uneasiness. We seem to be making ridiculously small preparations. Surely we ought to go better prepared if we are to get to our journey's end." "We shall never get to it if we do," said the professor gruffly, "and the sooner you two try to fit yourselves to the necessities of a desert journey the better." "I'm ready to do anything," said the doctor, "but I do not want to fail from doing too little." "What more would you do than Ibrahim is doing?" "I can hardly say on the spur of the moment, but with the exception of my medicines and instruments, and Frank's chemicals and things, we seem as if we are going on the march in the clothes we stand up in." "Yes," said the professor coolly, "and those we are going to leave behind in Ibrahim's tents." "Is all this true, Frank?" said the doctor. "I suppose so," was the reply; "but certainly things are moving far more rapidly than I anticipated." "It is what you wished," said the professor. "Then all we have to do now is to be ready?" "Yes, that is all." It was in furtherance of this that directly after dinner Frank summoned Sam and told him that they were to start in about an hour. "So the guv'nor's been telling me, sir; but he says we're to leave nearly everything behind." "Yes, Sam; it will be safe enough here." "Well, it caps me, sir, that it do! Mr Landon took pretty well everything away that I thought we wanted, and now he says that we're to leave the miserable little lot he chose himself." "Yes," said Frank quietly. "The only thing we're taking plenty of, it seems to me, is physic."