Skene thought for a moment. Should he take this fellow at his word; threaten him with death if he did not produce the pocket compass, or knock him down with the butt-end of his pistol and then search his pockets? An open quarrel was to be avoided. Skene felt himself to be a good deal, if not wholly, at the fellow's mercy. The latter could only delude him so far, at the risk of perilling himself; but he might, on the other hand, lure and betray him into the hands of the enemy, several of whom, under a leader named Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, were hovering on the skirts of the desert in various directions--a man known to have been a faithful adherent and kinsmen of the captive Zebehr Pasha. Nothing seemed to remain for Skene but to accept as before the guidance of Hassan Abdullah, so, after the latter had breakfasted on a few dates and the former on a simple ration from his haversack, once more they headed their course into what seemed to be an endless and markless waste of sand. Apart from the bodily pangs of thirst, anger, doubt, and anxiety were gathering in the mind of Malcolm; but he sternly resolved that the moment he became assured of Hassan Abdullah deluding or betraying him he would shoot that copper-coloured individual dead, as if he were a reptile or a wild beast. And Hassan no doubt knew quite enough of life in his own country to be aware that he rode on with his life in his hands. So another night and day passed away. And now, as we have referred to the desert here and elsewhere in the Soudan, it may seem the time to give a description of what such a waste is, and the scene that now spread before the anxious and bloodshot eyes of Malcolm Skene; for it has been justly said that he who has never travelled through such a place can form no idea of a locality so wondrous--one in which all the ordinary conditions of human life undergo a complete change. Once away from the valley of the Nile, all between the fourteenth degree and the shore of the Mediterranean, a tract of more than eight hundred thousand square miles _is desert_, treeless, waterless, without streams or rivulets, and almost without wells, which, when they exist, are scanty, few, and far apart. 'The first thing after reaching a well,' says a recent writer, 'is to ascertain the quantity and quality of its water. As to the former, it may have been exhausted by a preceding caravan, and hours may be required for a new supply to ooze in again. The quality of the desert water is generally bad, the exception being when it becomes worse, though long custom enables the Bedouins to drink water so brackish as to be intolerable to all except themselves and their flocks. Well do I remember how at each well the first skinful was tasted all round as epicures sip rare wines. Great was the joy if it was pronounced _moya helwa_, "sweet water;" but if the Bedouins said _moosh tayib_, "not good," we might be sure it was a solution of Epsom salts.'