face glimmered through the gathering darkness.

"Hi, dragoman, tell them that they are forgetting Mr. Stuart," cried the
Colonel.

"No use, sir," said Mansoor. "They say that he is too fat, and that they
will not take him any farther. He will die, they say, and why should
they trouble about him?"

"Not take him!" cried Cochrane. "Why, the man will perish of hunger and
thirst. Where's the Emir? Hi!" he shouted, as the black-bearded Arab
passed, with a tone like that in which he used to summon a dilatory
donkey-boy. The chief did not deign to answer him, but said something
to one of the guards, who dashed the butt of his Remington into the
Colonel's ribs.

[Illustration: The old soldier fell forward gasping p145]

The old soldier fell forward gasping, and was carried on half senseless,
clutching at the pommel of his saddle. The women began to cry, and the
men with muttered curses and clenched hands writhed in that hell of
impotent passion, where brutal injustice and ill-usage have to go
without check or even remonstrance. Belmont gripped at his hip-pocket
for his little revolver, and then remembered that he had already given
it to Miss Adams. If his hot hand had clutched it, it would have meant
the death of the Emir and the massacre of the party.

And now as they rode onwards they saw one of the most singular of
the phenomena of the Egyptian desert in front of them, though the ill
treatment of their companion had left them in no humour for appreciating
its beauty. When the sun had sunk, the horizon had remained of a
slaty-violet hue. But now this began to lighten and to brighten until a
curious false dawn developed, and it seemed as if a vacillating sun was
coming back along the path which it had just abandoned. A rosy pink hung
over the west, with beautifully delicate sea-green tints along the upper
edge of it. Slowly these faded into slate again, and the night had come.
It was but twenty-four hours since they had sat in their canvas chairs
discussing politics by starlight on the saloon deck of the _Korosko_;
only twelve since they had breakfasted there and had started spruce and
fresh upon their last pleasure trip. What a world of fresh impressions
had come upon them since then! How rudely they had been jostled out of
their take-it-for-granted complacency! The same shimmering silver stars
as they had looked upon last night, the same thin crescent of moon--but
they, what a chasm lay between that old pampered life