Saba received absolutely nothing more to eat or drink; the children saved some scraps for him, but he knew how to help himself out in some way, for he arrived at the halting-places with a bloody throat and traces of bites on his neck and chest. Whether the spoils of these fights were jackals or hyenas, or perhaps even sand-foxes and gazels, no one ever knew; it sufficed that he did not appear to be very hungry. Sometimes also his black lips were wet, as if he had drunk. The Bedouins supposed that he had dug deep holes in the ground of the ravines and in this manner had reached water that he had scented through the ground. Sometimes lost travelers dig up the broken earth, and if they do not always find water, they nearly always come upon wet sand, and by sucking the water out of it quench their painful thirst.
But a great change had also come over Saba. His chest and neck were still strong, but his flanks were sunken in, which made him look taller. His bloodshot eyes had a savage and threatening look. But to Nell and Stasch he was as devoted as ever, and let them do what they liked with him; he wagged his tail at Chamis now and then, but at the Bedouins and Sudanese he barked, showed his terrible fangs, and ground his teeth like iron nails. Thus Idris and Gebhr began to be afraid of him, and they hated him so that they would probably have shot him with the gun they had captured if the desire of bringing Smain such a rare specimen of an animal, and the fact that they had already left Assuan behind them, had not held them back.
Assuan lay behind them! Stasch continually thought of this, and it slowly dawned upon him that there was great doubt of the searchers overtaking them. It is true, he knew that not only the so-called Egypt—which ends below Wadi Halfa, that is, in the vicinity of the second cataract—but also the whole of Nubia, was at this time in the hands of the Egyptian Government, and he also realized that on the other side of Assuan, and especially below Wadi Halfa, it would be more difficult to search for them, and the orders of the government would be less promptly executed. However, he still cherished the hope that his father and Mr. Rawlison, after having organized the search, would go alone by steamer from Fayoum to Wadi Halfa, and from there, after having obtained from the government soldiers mounted on camels, would try to bar the way of the caravan from the southern side. The boy calculated that he would do this if he were so situated, and so he considered that he had a good foundation for his supposition.