preparing bitter disappointments for ourselves. If
we had been listening to an attack, we should have heard some reply.
Besides, an Egyptian attack would have been an attack in force. No doubt
it _is_, as you say, a little strange that they should have wasted their
cartridges,--by Jove, look at that!"

He was pointing over the eastern desert. Two figures were moving across
its expanse, swiftly and stealthily, furtive dark shadows against the
lighter ground. They saw them dimly, dipping and rising over the rolling
desert, now lost, now reappearing in the uncertain light. They were
flying away from the Arabs. And then, suddenly they halted upon the
summit of a sand-hill, and the prisoners could see them outlined plainly
against the sky. They were camel-men, but they sat their camels astride
as a horseman sits his horse.

"Gippy Camel Corps!" cried the Colonel.

"Two men," said Miss Adams, in a voice of despair.

"Only a vedette, ma'am! Throwing feelers out all over the desert. This
is one of them. Main body ten miles off, as likely as not. There they go
giving the alarm! Good old Camel Corps!"

The self-contained, methodical soldier had suddenly turned almost
inarticulate with his excitement. There was a red flash upon the top of
the sand-hill, and then another, followed by the crack of the rifles.
Then with a whisk the two figures were gone, as swiftly and silently as
two trout in a stream.

The Arabs had halted for an instant, as if uncertain whether they should
delay their journey to pursue them or not. There was nothing left to
pursue now, for amid the undulations of the sand-drift the vedettes
might have gone in any direction. The Emir galloped back along the line,
with exhortations and orders. Then the camels began to trot, and the
hopes of the prisoners were dulled by the agonies of the terrible jolt.
Mile after mile and mile after mile they sped onwards over that vast
expanse, the women clinging as best they might to the pommels, the
Colonel almost as spent as they, but still keenly on the lookout for any
sign of the pursuers.

"I think---- I think," cried Mrs. Belmont, "that something is moving in
front of us."

The Colonel raised himself upon his saddle, and screened his eyes from
the moonshine.

"By Jove, you're right there, ma'am. There are men over yonder."

They could all see them now, a straggling line of riders far ahead of
them in the desert.

"They are going in the same direction as we," cr