to be fought, while help was often
required after occasional raids made during the journey, in which the
desperate dwellers in village or camp fought hard and mostly in vain for
their lives and property, as well as to save those whom they held dear
from being carried off as slaves.

"It is horrible!" Frank used to say. "These tribes are like a
pestilence passing through the land. The atrocities of which they are
guilty are a hundred times worse than I could have believed. There can
never be rest for the unfortunate inhabitants till they are swept away."

"Never," said the professor gravely. "The land will soon be one wide
desolation, for the smiling oases where irrigation could do its part
will soon be gone back to a waste of sand."

"And by the irony of fate," continued Frank bitterly, "here are we--so
many English people, whose hearts bleed for the horrors we are forced to
see--doing our best afterwards to restore to health and strength the
wretches who have robbed and murdered in every peaceful village they
have passed."

He looked, and spoke, at the Hakim, as these utterances passed his lips,
and his brother's old school-fellow shook his head at him reproachfully.

"Don't blame me, Frank, my lad," he said. "I often think as you do, and
it is only by looking upon the wounded men brought in as patients that I
can get on with my task. Then the interest in my profession helps me,
and I forget all about what they may have done. But I get very weary of
it all sometimes."

"Weary, yes!" cried Frank; "but you must forgive me. It was all my
doing, and I must be half mad to speak to you as I did."

"You are both forgetting why we came," said the professor quietly; "and
between ourselves, you two, isn't it rather childish to talk as you do?"

"I don't know," said Frank impatiently; "all I can feel is that we seem
as far from helping poor Hal as ever."

"Oh, no, we are not," said the professor. "We must be getting very near
to the Khalifa's strongholds now, and we are going to enter with
pass-keys, my lad. Once there, it will be hard if we don't find poor
old Hal."

"Hard indeed," said the doctor, with energy; "but we must and will."

"Well said!" continued the professor. "I think we have done wonders.
Such good fortune can never have fallen to anyone before."

"Good fortune!" said Frank bitterly.

"Ah, you want your pulse felt, young fellow. You've got a sour instead
of a thankful fit upon you. Giv