Other Sheikhs came and went, with their standard-bearers and horsemen; conferences were evidently held with Moussa Abu Hagil; Skene found himself an object of growing hostility, and suspected 'that something, he knew not what,' was in progress; that Gordon had actually been victorious or rescued at Khartoum, or some great battle had been lost by the Mahdi. He could gather from his knowledge of the language, and the remarks that were let fall unwittingly in his hearing that the zereba was to be abandoned for a general movement on Khartoum, or for another fortified post farther up the country--a move worse for him; and the consequent preparations, therefore, packing tents, provisions, and spoil, had begun. To save further trouble, and gratify the lust of blood which forms a part of the Oriental nature, he might be assassinated after all--after having found protection under the roof and eaten the salt of Moussa--killed as poor Hector MacLaine was killed after the battle of Candahar, two or three years before this time. The expression of Moussa's face as he regarded him occasionally now, was neither pleasant nor reassuring; his deep set eyes, when he was excited, glared with fire, like lights in the sockets of a skull; and Malcolm Skene never knew when the supreme moment might come. In the morning he had no assurance that he should see night--in the night that he would be a live man in the morning. Anything--death itself--were better than this keen and cruel suspense. One evening about sunset there was a vehement beating of tom-toms, and a body of Baggara Arabs, some on horseback, others on camels, but many on foot--a fierce and jabbering mob, all but nude--though well-armed with bright-bladed Solingen swords and excellent Remington rifles, passed the zereba, bound for some point of attack; and the Sheikh Moussa, with every man he could muster, joined them in hot haste. So great had been the bustle and hurry of their departure that Malcolm Skene, to his astonishment, found himself forgotten, overlooked; and, full of hopeful thoughts, he lay quiet and still in the poor apartment allotted to him, watching the strange constellations and stars unknown to Europe through the unglazed aperture that served as a window, and listening to the silence--if we may use such a paradox--a silence that seemed to be broken only by the pulsations of his own heart, as hope grew up in it suddenly, and he thought that, considering a kind of crisis that had come in his fate, now or never was the time to make a stroke for liberty, and to elude, if possible, the few Arabs who were left to watch the gates in the dense mimosa hedge that surrounded the zereba. To elude them--but how?