touched. I may save
his life."

"It would be a miracle, Excellency," said the Sheikh slowly. "Look:
there is a dark cloud coming over his face."

"No," said the doctor gravely; "that is because the spirit in him is so
low. He is falling into a sleep that is almost death, but he still
lives. Tell these men that he is not to be moved, and that their chief
must send a tent here to place over him. Let two of your men come now
to spread a cloth above him to keep off the sun until the tent is set
up."

The message was given, and the men hurried away to rejoin their people,
while in a very few minutes the Baggara chief and his companion
appeared, walking hurriedly, and made their way to the side of the
wounded man, to look at him anxiously and as if his condition was a
great trouble to them, the elder going down on one knee to lay a hand
upon the sufferer's brow.

The next minute he was up again, and the two chiefs were chatting
hurriedly together, before the elder turned to Ibrahim and spoke
earnestly, his voice sounding hoarse and changed.

"O Hakim," said the Sheikh, "he says that this is his son, whom he
loves, and it will be like robbing him of his own life if the boy dies.
He says that you must not let him sink. Sooner let all the wounded men
who are coming to you die than this one. You must make him live, and
all that the chief has is thine."

"How can I make the man live?" said the Hakim sternly, and frowning at
the chief as he spoke to the interpreter. "Has not all his life-blood
been spilled upon the sand as they brought him here? Tell him at once
that I am not a prophet, only a simple surgeon; that I have done all
that is possible, and that the rest is with God."

The Sheikh reverently translated the Hakim's words to the Baggara chief,
and those who heard him fully expected to hear some angry outburst; but
the chief bent humbly before the Hakim and touched his hand.

In a short time, under the Baggara chief's supervision, a tent was set
up over the wounded man, and by then two large groups of patients were
waiting patiently for the Hakim's ministrations--those whom he had
tended on the previous day, and about a dozen wounded men who had come
in during the night.

It was a new class of practice for the London practitioner, however
familiar it might have been to the surgeon of a regiment on active
service; but wounds are wounds, whether received in the everyday life of
a mechanic who has injured