th the Emir.
When he returned he said something to his comrades, one of whom closed
in upon each side of the minister's camel, so as to prevent him from
falling. The friendly negro sidled his beast up to the Colonel, and
whispered to him.

"We are going to halt presently, Belmont," said Cochrane.

"Thank God! They may give us some water. We can't go on like this."

"I told Tippy Tilly that, if he could help us, we would turn him into a
Bimbashi when we got him back into Egypt. I think he's willing enough if
he only had the power. By Jove, Belmont, do look back at the river."

Their route, which had lain through sand-strewn khors with jagged, black
edges,--places up which one would hardly think it possible that a
camel could climb,--opened out now on to a hard, rolling plain, covered
thickly with rounded pebbles, dipping and rising to the violet hills
upon the horizon. So regular were the long, brown pebble-strewn curves,
that they looked like the dark rollers of some monstrous ground-swell.
Here and there a little straggling sage-green tuft of camel-grass
sprouted up between the stones. Brown plains and violet hills,--nothing
else in front of them! Behind lay the black jagged rocks through which
they had passed with orange slopes of sand, and then far away a thin
line of green to mark the course of the river. How cool and beautiful
that green looked in the stark, abominable wilderness! On one side they
could see the high rock,--the accursed rock which had tempted them to
their ruin. On the other the river curved, and the sun gleamed upon the
water. Oh, that liquid gleam, and the insurgent animal cravings, the
brutal primitive longings, which for the instant took the soul out of
all of them! They had lost families, countries, liberty, everything, but
it was only of water, water, water, that they could think. Mr. Stuart,
in his delirium, began roaring for oranges, and it was insufferable
for them to have to listen to him. Only the rough, sturdy Irishman rose
superior to that bodily craving. That gleam of river must be somewhere
near Haifa, and his wife might be upon the very water at which he
looked. He pulled his hat over his eyes, and rode in gloomy silence,
biting at his strong, iron-grey moustache.

[Illustration: Looking for some landmark p124]

Slowly the sun sank towards the west, and their shadows began to trail
along the path where their hearts would go. It was cooler, and a desert
breeze had sprung up, whi