" His voice broke with emotion. "For six years, for every
night of six years, until this night, I have seen the Southern Cross.
How often have I lain awake watching it, wondering whether the night
would ever come when I should not see those four slanting stars! I tell
you, Feversham, this is the first moment when I have really dared to
think that we should escape."
Both men sat up and watched the southern sky with prayers of
thankfulness in their hearts; and when they fell asleep it was only to
wake up again and again with a fear that they would after all still see
that constellation blazing low down towards the earth, and to fall
asleep again confident of the issue of their desert ride. At the end of
seven days they came to Shof-el-Ain, a tiny well set in a barren valley
between featureless ridges, and by the side of that well they camped.
They were in the country of the Amrab Arabs, and had come to an end of
their peril.
"We are safe," cried Abou Fatma. "God is good. Northwards to Assouan,
westwards to Wadi Halfa, we are safe!" And spreading a cloth upon the
ground in front of the kneeling camels, he heaped dhurra before them. He
even went so far in his gratitude as to pat one of the animals upon the
neck, and it immediately turned upon him and snarled.
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