But he could not
conjecture at the particular cause, and the only consequence of his
perplexed imaginings was the growth of a very real anger within him
against the man who had been his friend. So the winter passed, and
summer came to the Soudan and the month of May.
CHAPTER X
THE WELLS OF OBAK
In that month of May Durrance lifted his eyes from Wadi Halfa and began
eagerly to look homeward. But in the contrary direction, five hundred
miles to the south of his frontier town, on the other side of the great
Nubian desert and the Belly of Stones, the events of real importance to
him were occurring without his knowledge. On the deserted track between
Berber and Suakin the wells of Obak are sunk deep amongst mounds of
shifting sand. Eastward a belt of trees divides the dunes from a hard
stony plain built upon with granite hills; westward the desert stretches
for fifty-eight waterless miles to Mahobey and Berber on the Nile, a
desert so flat that the merest tuft of grass knee-high seems at the
distance of a mile a tree promising shade for a noonday halt, and a pile
of stones no bigger than one might see by the side of any roadway in
repair achieves the stature of a considerable hill.
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