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A description in detail of the journey from Bab-us-Sahel to the frontier would be as wearisome to the reader as the journey itself was to the travellers. Lady Haigh and Penelope learned to remain resolutely in the saddle for hours after they had determined that human nature could do no more than slip off helplessly on the sand, and they discovered also how remarkably little in the way of luxuries one camel could carry when it was already loaded with bedding and camp-furniture. They found that there was not much to choose, so far as comfort was concerned, between the acknowledged desert, diversified by sand-storms and mirages, and the so-called forests, where trees above and bushes below were alike as dry as tinder, and a spark carelessly dropped might have meant death to the whole party. An interlude in the shape of a river-voyage might have seemed to promise better things, but the small flat-bottomed steamers were cramped and hot, incredibly destitute of conveniences, and perversely given to running aground in spots where they had to remain until a levy had been made on the neighbouring population to drag them off. Scenery there was none, save banks of mud, for the river ran high above the level of the country through which it flowed; and it was with positive relief that the travellers disembarked at a little mud settlement embowered in date-palms, and prepared for a further ride. A fresh trial was awaiting Lady Haigh here in the shape of a peremptory order to Sir Dugald to push on at once to Alibad by forced marches, leaving the ladies to follow quietly under the care of the regimental surgeon. Major Keeling, with a portion of his regiment and the little band of picked men he had gathered together to help him administer his district, had preceded the Haighs’ party, travelling as fast as possible; and now it seemed as if his restless energy had involved him already in hostilities with the wild tribes. Lady Haigh turned very white as she bade her husband farewell; but she made no attempt to hold him back, and he rode away into the sand-clouds with his two or three horsemen. She would have liked to follow him as fast as possible; but Dr Tarleton, a dark taciturn man, remarkable for nothing but an absolute devotion to Major Keeling, had his orders, and meant to obey them. He had been told to conduct the ladies quietly to Alibad, and quietly they should go, taking proper rest, and not pushing on faster than his medical judgment allowed. The desert was even drier, hotter, and less inhabited than that between Bab-us-Sahel and the river, and to the travellers it seemed unending. Of course they suffered torments from prickly heat, and became unrecognisable through the attacks of mosquitoes; and Lady Haigh’s ringlets worried her so much that nothing but the thought of her husband’s disappointment restrained her from cutting them off altogether. As the distance from Alibad became less, however, her spirits seemed to revive, though this was not due to any special charm in the locality. Even Penelope was astonished at the interest and vivacity with which her friend contemplated and remarked upon a stretch of desert which looked like nothing so much as a sea of shifting mud, with a small group of mud-built huts clustering round a mud-built fort, like shoals about a sandbank, and a range of mud-coloured hills rising above it on the left. No trees, no water, no European buildings: decidedly Alibad, sweltering in the glaring sun, did not look a promising abode. Sir Dugald must be very delightful indeed if his presence could render such a place even tolerable. And why had he not come to meet his wife?