With these words he returned to his work.
During this explanation Mr. Rawlison’s face turned as white as paper. Looking at his friend with a wild stare, he raised his hat, lifted his hand to his perspiring forehead, and staggered as if he were about to fall.
“Rawlison, be a man!” cried Mr. Tarkowski. “Our children have been kidnapped. They must be saved!”
“Nell! Nell!” repeated the unhappy Englishman. “Nell and Stasch! It is not Stasch’s fault! They have both been brought here by treachery and then carried off. Who knows why? Perhaps in hopes of a ransom. Chamis is certainly in the plot, and so are Idris and Gebhr.”
Now he remembered what Fatima had said, that both these Sudanese were of the Dangali tribe, to which the Mahdi belonged, and that Chadigi, the father of Chamis, was also of the same tribe. As he thought of this his heart nearly stopped beating, for now he knew that the children had not been carried off in the hopes of a ransom, but to be exchanged for Smain and his family.
“But what would the tribe of the evil-minded prophet do with them? It would be impossible for them to hide themselves in the desert or anywhere along the banks of the Nile, for in the desert they would all die of hunger and thirst, and on the bank of the Nile they would be sure to be discovered. So there was only one course for them to pursue, and that was to flee with the children to the Mahdi!”
This thought filled Mr. Tarkowski with terror, but this energetic man, who had formerly been a soldier, soon composed himself, recalled vividly to his memory all that had happened, and tried to think of some means of rescuing the children.
“Fatima,” he reasoned, “had no cause to revenge herself on our children; so if they were carried off it was only to give them into Smain’s hands. There is no possibility of their being threatened with death, and in misfortune that is something; but, on the other hand, the road that lies before them may lead to their destruction.”
He told Mr. Rawlison what he thought, then he continued:
“Idris and Gebhr, savage and ignorant men, think that the hosts of the Mahdi are not far off, but the Mahdi has advanced as far as Khartum, which is about two thousand kilometers from here. This distance they would have to travel along the banks of the Nile; they can not leave this route, for if they do the camels and the people would die of thirst. Go immediately to Cairo and ask the Khedive to send telegrams to every military station and make a raid on both banks of the river. The sheiks on the banks must be offered a large reward for the capture of the kidnappers. Every one coming to the villages to get water must be held up. In this way Idris and Gebhr will surely fall into the hands of the law, and we will have our children once more.”