First of all, in order to reach it I should have to face the crocodiles. And even should I escape their jaws again, what could I do on the river? Sooner or later I should be caught. And I had a very strong suspicion that Sir Robert Ottley would not hesitate, once I was in his power, to plunge me into an Egyptian prison. He had evidence enough to get me a long term of hard labour, and I felt little doubt but that he would go to a lot of trouble for that, and _con amore_ after the way that I had served him. It did not, therefore, take me long to resolve to risk the desert rather than rot in an Egyptian gaol. I had spilt a lot of milk. I was foodless, waterless, and Gods knows where. Also, I was as thirsty as a lime kiln. But no use crying. What to do? That was the question. For a start, I lay down and pressed my cheek against the ground. The horizon thus examined showed a faintly circled unbroken level line in all directions except the northwest. There it was interrupted for a space by a mound that was either a cloud-bank or a grove of trees. It proved to be the latter. I found there water to drink and dates to eat. Next morning I took my bearings from the sun, and giving the river a wide berth I pressed on north for two days and nights on an empty stomach. Then I shot an ibis with my revolver in a reedy marsh and ate it raw. Next day I climbed into the mountains and looked back on Assuan and Philæ. But it is not my purpose to describe my wanderings minutely. It would take too long. Suffice it to say that I changed clothes with an Arab near Redesieh and entered Eonah dyed as a Nubian a week later, after crossing the river at El-Kab in a fisherman's canoe. The Nile was still ringing with my doings, so I judged it best to proceed on foot to Luqsor. But there I got a job in a dahabeah that was conveying a party of French savants back from Elephantine to Abydos. I stayed with them three weeks, hearing much talk, meanwhile, of a certain rascally Scotch doctor named Pinsent. It was supposed he had perished in the desert. One day, however, hearing that Sir Robert Ottley, who had been lying at Thebes, had been seen at Lykopolis, I deserted from my employ, and walked back to Farschat. There I bought a passage on a store-boat and came by easy stages to Beni Hassan. Thence I tramped to Abu Girgeh, where I lay for a fortnight, ill of a wasting fever, in the house of a man I had formerly befriended. A large reward had been offered for my arrest, but he was an Arab of the better sort. So far from betraying me to outraged justice, he cashed my cheque for a respectable amount and procured me a passage to Cairo on a river steamer. I entered the ancient city of Memphis one day at dusk, a wreck of my old self and as black as the ace of spades. Not daring to reclaim my goods at my lodging-house, I proceeded forthwith to Alexandria with no wardrobe save the clothes upon my back, and so anxious was I to escape from Egypt that I shipped