ine-cards by the places, the long necks of the bottles,
the siphons upon the sideboard. Sadie, who had borne up so well, became
suddenly hysterical, and her shrieks of senseless laughter jarred
horribly upon their nerves. Her aunt on one side of her and Mr. Stephens
on the other did all they could to soothe her, and at last the weary,
over-strung girl relapsed into something between a sleep and a faint,
hanging limp over her pommel, and only kept from falling by the friends
who clustered round her. The baggage-camels were as weary as their
riders, and again and again they had to jerk at their nose-ropes to
prevent them from lying down. From horizon to horizon stretched that one
hugh arch of speckless blue, and up its monstrous concavity crept the
inexorable sun, like some splendid but barbarous deity, who claimed a
tribute of human suffering as his immemorial right.

Their course still lay along the old trade route, but their progress was
very slow, and more than once the two Emirs rode back together and shook
their heads as they looked at the weary baggage-camels on which the
prisoners were perched. The greatest laggard of all was one which was
ridden by a wounded Soudanese soldier. It was limping badly with a
strained tendon, and it was only by constant prodding that it could be
kept with the others. The Emir Wad Ibraham raised his Remington, as the
creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet through its brain. The wounded
man flew forwards out of the high saddle, and fell heavily upon the hard
track. His companions in misfortune, looking back, saw him stagger to
his feet with a dazed face. At the same instant a Baggara slipped down
from his camel with a sword in his hand.

[Illustration: Sword in his hand p184]

"Don't look! don't look!" cried Belmont to the ladies, and they all rode
on with their faces to the south. They heard no sound, but the Baggara
passed them a few minutes afterwards. He was cleaning his sword upon the
hairy neck of his camel, and he glanced at them with a quick, malicious
gleam of his teeth as he trotted by. But those who are at the lowest
pitch of human misery are at least secured against the future. That
vicious, threatening smile which might once have thrilled them left them
now unmoved--or stirred them at most to vague resentment.

There were many things to interest them in this old trade route, had
they been in a condition to take notice of them. Here and there along
its course were the c