At last came the exordium about the starving
children, and Feversham begged Idris to take fifteen dollars.
Trench's plan succeeded. That night Feversham slept in the open, and two
nights later Trench lay down beside him. Overhead was a clear sky and
the blazing stars.
"Only three more days," said Feversham, and he heard his companion draw
in a long breath. For a while they lay side by side in silence,
breathing the cool night air, and then Trench said:--
"Are you awake?"
"Yes."
"Well," and with some hesitation he made that confidence which he had
repressed on the day when they sat upon the foreshore of the Nile. "Each
man has his particular weak spot of sentiment, I suppose. I have mine. I
am not a marrying man, so it's not sentiment of that kind. Perhaps you
will laugh at it. It isn't merely that I loathe this squalid, shadeless,
vile town of Omdurman, or the horrors of its prison. It isn't merely
that I hate the emptiness of those desert wastes. It isn't merely that I
am sick of the palm trees of Khartum, or these chains or the whips of
the gaolers. But there's something more. I want to die at home, and I
have been desperately afraid so often that I should die here.
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