Then he picked up his spears and his shield.
Abou Fatma watched him labour up the slope of loose sand and disappear
again on the further incline of the crest. Then in his turn he rose, and
hastily. When Harry Feversham had set out from Obak six days before to
traverse the fifty-eight miles of barren desert to the Nile, this grey
donkey had carried his water-skins and food.
Abou Fatma drove the donkey down amongst the trees, and fastening it to
a stem examined its shoulders. In the left shoulder a tiny incision had
been made and the skin neatly stitched up again with fine thread. He cut
the stitches, and pressing open the two edges of the wound, forced out a
tiny package little bigger than a postage stamp. The package was a
goat's bladder, and enclosed within the bladder was a note written in
Arabic and folded very small. Abou Fatma had not been Gordon's
body-servant for nothing; he had been taught during his service to read.
He unfolded the note, and this is what was written:--
"The houses which were once Berber are destroyed, and a new town of wide
streets is building. There is no longer any sign by which I may know the
ruins of Yusef's house from the ruins of a hundred houses; nor does
Yusef any longer sell rock-salt in the bazaar.
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