Miss Adams had been very ill after her privations, and this was the first time that she had been allowed to come upon deck after dinner.

She sat now in a lounge chair, thinner, sterner, and kindlier than ever, while Sadie stood beside her and tucked the rugs around her shoulders.

Mr.Stephens was carrying over the coffee and placing it on the wicker table beside them.

On the other side of the deck Belmont and his wife were seated together in silent sympathy and contentment.
Monsieur Fardet was leaning against the rail, and arguing about the remissness of the British Government in not taking a more complete control of the Egyptian frontier, while the Colonel stood very erect in front of him, with the red end of a cigar-stump protruding from under his moustache.
But what was the matter with the Colonel?
Who would have recognised him who had only seen the broken old man in the Libyan Desert?
There might be some little grizzling about the moustache, but the hair was back once more at the fine glossy black which had been so much admired upon the voyage up.

With a stony face and an unsympathetic manner he had received, upon his return to Halfa, all the commiserations about the dreadful way in which his privations had blanched him, and then diving into his cabin, he had reappeared within an hour exactly as he had been before that fatal moment when he had been cut off from the manifold resources of civilisation.