. Go on
and bathe yourself. You want it as badly as I."

"But let me tend you a bit, sir--Ben."

"Sir Ben!" cried Frank angrily. "You mean to betray us, then?"

"It's just like me, Ben Eddin; but you will let me give you a cool
sponge down? It's quite right, sir, as a barber."

"No, no, I'm better now," said Frank sharply, and he busied himself in
getting rid of the unpleasant traces of their ride, feeling the better
for the effort he was forced to make, and listening in silence to Sam,
who, after so long an interval from conversation was eager to make use
of his tongue.

"Hah!" he said; "water is a blessing in a country like this; but oh, Ben
Eddin, did you ever see such a place and such a people?"

"No," said Frank shortly. "Horrible!"

"Why, our Arabs, sir, with their bit of a tent are princes and kings to
'em. Ugh! the horrible filth and smells and sights, and then the
slaves!"

"Horrible!" said Frank again.

"I've read a deal about slavery, sir, and the--what do they call it?--
atrocities; but what they put in print isn't half bad enough."

"Not half," assented Frank.

"After what I have seen to-day, not being at all a killing and
slaughtering sort of man, I feel as if it's a sort of duty for our
soldiers to come up here with fixed bayonets, and drive the black
ruffians right away back into the hot deserts they came from. Did you
see inside one of those huts we passed?"

"I saw inside many, Sam," replied Frank.

"I meant that one where the two miserable-looking women came to the door
to see us pass."

"What, where a man came back to them just before we reached the dying
camel?"

"Yes; that was the place."

"I just caught a glimpse of him as we passed."

"Was that all, Ben Eddin?"

"Yes, that was all. Why?"

"Ah, you were on first, and I was a bit behind the professor, sir, and I
saw it all."

"What did you see?"

"Saw him go up to first one and then the other, knocking them down with
a big blow of his fist; and the poor things crouched with their faces in
the sand and never said a word."

"The savage!"

"That's right," said Sam viciously. "I was talking to Mr Abraham about
it afterwards, and he said he saw it too, and that they were slaves,
like hundreds upon hundreds more, who had been taken in some village the
wretches had looted, and that he hadn't a doubt that their husbands had
been cut down and killed in one of the raids. What's a raid, sir?"

"A plundering expediti