w very well that
they would fall off when they began to gallop. I fear that you men will
fall off, for it is no easy matter to remain upon a galloping camel; but
as to the women, it is impossible. No, we shall leave the women, and if
you will not leave the women, then we shall leave all of you and start
by ourselves."

"Very good! Go!" said the Colonel, abruptly, and settled down as if to
sleep once more. He knew that with Orientals it is the silent man who is
most likely to have his way.

The negro turned and crept away for some little distance, where he was
met by one of his fellaheen comrades, Mehemet Ali, who had charge of the
camels. The two argued for some little time,--for those three hundred
golden pieces were not to be lightly resigned. Then the negro crept back
to Colonel Cochrane.

"Mehemet Ali has agreed," said he. "He has gone to put the nose-rope
upon three more of the camels. But it is foolishness, and we are all
going to our death. Now come with me, and we shall awaken the women and
tell them."

The Colonel shook his companions and whispered to them what was in the
wind. Belmont and Fardet were ready for any risk. Stephens, to whom the
prospect of a passive death presented little terror, was seized with a
convulsion of fear when he thought of any active exertion to avoid
it, and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. Then he pulled out his
Baedeker and began to write his will upon the fly-leaf, but his hand
twitched so that he was hardly legible. By some strange gymnastic of the
legal mind, a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a place
in the established order of things, while a death which overtook
one galloping frantically over a desert was wholly irregular and
discomposing. It was not dissolution which he feared, but the
humiliation and agony of a fruitless struggle against it.

Colonel Cochrane and Tippy Tilly had crept together under the shadow of
the great acacia tree to the spot where the women were lying. Sadie and
her aunt lay with their arms round each other, the girl's head pillowed
upon the old woman's bosom. Mrs. Belmont was awake, and entered into the
scheme in an instant.

"But you must leave me," said Miss Adams, earnestly. "What does it
matter at my age, anyhow?"

"No, no, Aunt Eliza; I won't move without you! Don't you think it!"
cried the girl. "You've got to come straight away, or else we both stay
right here where we are."

"Come, come, ma'am, there is no time