Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/455

 Rh "Jeszcze Polska nie zginela," for he wished to leave some trace of their sojourn in that region.

The Englishmen, to whom he translated the inscription, were astonished that it never occurred to the boy to perpetuate his own name on that rock. But he preferred to carve the words he had chosen.

He did not cease, however, to take care of Nell and awoke in her such unbounded confidence that when Clary asked her whether she did not fear the storms on the Red Sea, the little maid raised her beautiful, calm eyes and only answered, "Stas will know what to do." Captain Glenn claimed that truer evidence of what Stas was to the little one and greater praise for the boy no one would be able to pronounce.

Though the first despatch to Pan Tarkowski at Port Said had been worded with much care, it nevertheless created such a powerful sensation that joy almost killed Nell's father. But Pan Tarkowski, though he was an exceptionally self-controlled person, in the first moments after the receipt of the despatch, knelt in prayer and began to beseech God that the intelligence should not prove to be a delusion, a morbid chimera, bred from sorrow, longing, and pain. Why, they had both toiled so hard to learn that the children were even alive! Mr. Rawlinson had despatched to the Sudân whole caravans, while Pan Tarkowski, disguised as an Arab, had penetrated with the greatest danger to his life as far as Khartûm, but all was futile. The men who could have given any news died of smallpox, of starvation, or perished during the continual massacres, and of the children there was not the slightest clue. In the end both fathers lost all hope and lived only on recollections, in the deep conviction that