Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/177

Rh the post. But Gebhr with Chamis drove them away with courbashes. On the following day Stas met them again and received from them a little measure of rice together with two quinine powders, which the missionary instructed him to save most carefully in the expectation that in Fashoda fever inevitably awaited both.

"You will ride now," he said, "alongside of the dense floating masses in the White Nile or the so-called 'sudds'. The river, not being able to flow freely across the barriers composed of vegetation and weeds which the current of the water carries and deposits in the more shallow places, forms there extensive and infectious swamps, amid which the fever does not spare even the negroes. Beware particularly of sleeping on the bare ground without a fire."

"We already wish to die," answered Stas, almost with a moan.

At this the missionary raised his haggard face and for a while prayed; after which he made the sign of the cross over the boy and said:

"Trust in God. You did not deny Him; so His mercy and care will be over you."

Stas tried not only to beg, but to work. A certain day, seeing a crowd of men laboring at the place of prayer, he joined them, and began to carry clay for the palisade with which the place was to be surrounded. They jeered at and jostled him, but at evening the old sheik, who superintended the work, gave him twelve dates. Stas was immensely overjoyed at this compensation, for dates with rice formed the only wholesome nourishment for Nell and became more and more difficult to obtain in Omdurmân.

So he brought them with pride to his little sister, to whom he gave everything which he could secure; he sustained himself for a week almost exclusively upon