t the chief, and then his long black arm
swung upwards and his sword hissed over his shoulder. But the dragoman
had screamed out something which arrested the blow, and which brought
the chief and the lieutenant to his side with a new interest upon their
swarthy faces. The others crowded in also, and formed a dense circle
around the grovelling, pleading man.

The Colonel had not understood this sudden change, nor had the others
fathomed the reason of it, but some instinct flashed it upon Stephens's
horrified perceptions.

"Oh, you villain!" he cried, furiously.

"Hold your tongue, you miserable creature! Be silent! Better die--a
thousand times better die!"

But it was too late, and already they could all see the base design by
which the coward hoped to save his own life. He was about to betray the
women. They saw the chief, with a brave man's contempt upon his stern
face, make a sign of haughty assent, and then Mansoor spoke rapidly and
earnestly, pointing up the hill. At a word from the Baggara, a dozen of
the raiders rushed up the path and were lost to view upon the top. Then
came a shrill cry, a horrible, strenuous scream of surprise and terror,
and an instant later the party streamed into sight again, dragging the
women in their midst. Sadie, with her young, active limbs, kept up with
them as they sprang down the slope, encouraging her aunt all the while
over her shoulder. The older lady, struggling amid the rushing white
figures, looked with her thin limbs and open mouth like a chicken being
dragged from a coop.

[Illustration: The party streamed into sight again p103]

The chief's dark eyes glanced indifferently at Miss Adams, but gazed
with a smouldering fire at the younger woman. Then he gave an abrupt
order, and the prisoners were hurried in a miserable, hopeless drove
to the cluster of kneeling camels. Their pockets had already been
ransacked, and the contents thrown into one of the camel-food bags, the
neck of which was tied up by Ali Wad Ibrahim's own hands.

"I say, Cochrane," whispered Belmont, looking with smouldering eyes at
the wretched Mansoor, "I've got a little hip revolver which they have
not discovered. Shall I shoot that cursed dragoman for giving away the
women?"

The Colonel shook his head.

"You had better keep it," said he, with a sombre face. "The women may
find some other use for it before all is over."

CHAPTER V

The camels, some brown and some white, were kneeling in a