“I had. They have it now”--pointing to the sleeping Gondos. “I took it from the great Sherif el Habib’s medicine case.” “Oh!” Ibrahim evidently was alarmed at the consequences of the madcap’s theft, or as he would put it, enforced borrowing. Max laughed heartily, and suggested that they should “git up and get.” This Yankeeism was too much for the Persian. He began to believe that Max was really mad. The suggestion, however, was a good one, and gathering together food, and some other stores, enough to last several days, the two young men left their escorts fast asleep and proceeded alone on their journey. Instead of following the route M’Kamba had sketched out for them, they turned to the right, determined to follow as far as possible the course of the river until the oasis was crossed, and then to trust to their luck in finding the encampment of Sherif el Habib. CHAPTER XIX. MOHAMMED. The oasis was nearly crossed when they left the Gondo escorts, and the young explorers soon found themselves on the terrible African desert. They were not pursued--at least, as far as they knew--and they were delighted at regaining their freedom. After a day of misery on the sand, when their eyes were blistered, their nostrils swollen, and their ears deafened with the never-ending atoms, which drifted everywhere, Ibrahim directed the attention of his companion to a cloud of sand in the distance. “What of it?” asked Max. “Camels.” “Well?” “It is a caravan, and if we can reach it we shall be safe.” “But----” “Never mind any buts; come along, Max.” “I shan’t stir one inch,” asserted Max, resolutely. “Why?” “Because the caravan is coming this way.” “Bravo! So it is. _Inshallah!_” Resting in the hot burning sand, the young men waited until they could distinguish the outlines of the approaching caravan. Then they rose up and went to meet them. In the front rode a man, with olive skin, not darker than a Spaniard. He was dressed in Egyptian costume, and sat perfectly contented on his camel. A spear rested across the animal’s back, and a modern rifle was slung over the rider’s shoulders. But what was most remarkable was a sacred carpet, which acted as a kind of saddle cloth, and on which had been worked the symbolic sign of the crescent suspended over the cross. The combination was so strange that Max was inclined to believe the rider was some monomaniac, or, in modern parlance, a crank. Ibrahim, stepping up to the rider, and in good Arabic, asked who he was, and whither he was going. The rider looked at the young Persian some minutes before answering, giving Max an opportunity to look at the people who composed the caravan. Some thirty men, dressed like the leader, save that they had not the sacred carpet with the double symbols, rode as many camels.