THE WELLS OF OBAK In that month of May Durrance lifted his eyes from Wadi Halfa and began eagerly to look homeward.

But in the contrary direction, five hundred miles to the south of his frontier town, on the other side of the great Nubian desert and the Belly of Stones, the events of real importance to him were occurring without his knowledge.

On the deserted track between Berber and Suakin the wells of Obak are sunk deep amongst mounds of shifting sand.

Eastward a belt of trees divides the dunes from a hard stony plain built upon with granite hills; westward the desert stretches for fifty-eight waterless miles to Mahobey and Berber on the Nile, a desert so flat that the merest tuft of grass knee-high seems at the distance of a mile a tree promising shade for a noonday halt, and a pile of stones no bigger than one might see by the side of any roadway in repair achieves the stature of a considerable hill.

In this particular May there could be no spot more desolate than the wells of Obak.