two argued for some little time--for those three hundred
golden pieces were not to be lightly resigned. Then the negro crept
back to Colonel Cochrane.

"Mehemet Ali has agreed," said he. "He has gone to put the nose-rope
upon three more of the camels. But it is foolishness, and we are all
going to our death. Now come with me, and we shall awaken the women and
tell them."

The Colonel shook his companions and whispered to them what was in the
wind. Belmont and Fardet were ready for any risk. Stephens, to whom
the prospect of a passive death presented little terror, was seized with
a convulsion of fear when he thought of any active exertion to avoid it,
and shivered in all his long, thin limbs. Then he pulled out his
Baedeker and began to write his will upon the flyleaf, but his hand
twitched so that he was hardly legible. By some strange gymnastic of
the legal mind a death, even by violence, if accepted quietly, had a
place in the order of things, while a death which overtook one galloping
frantically over a desert was wholly irregular and discomposing. It was
not dissolution which he feared, but the humiliation and agony of a
fruitless struggle against it.

Colonel Cochrane and Tippy Tilly had crept together under the shadow of
the great acacia tree to the spot where the women were lying. Sadie and
her aunt lay with their arms round each other, the girl's head pillowed
upon the old woman's bosom. Mrs. Belmont was awake, and entered into
the scheme in an instant.

"But you must leave me," said Miss Adams earnestly. "What does it
matter at my age, anyhow?"

"No, no, Aunt Eliza; I won't move without you! Don't you think it!"
cried the girl. "You've got to come straight away or else we both stay
right here where we are."

"Come, come, ma'am, there is no time for arguing, or nonsense," said the
Colonel roughly. "Our lives all depend upon your making an effort, and
we cannot possibly leave you behind."

"But I will fall off."

"I'll tie you on with my puggaree. I wish I had the cummerbund which I
lent poor Stuart. Now, Tippy, I think we might make a break for it!"

But the black soldier had been staring with a disconsolate face out over
the desert, and he turned upon his heel with an oath.

"There!" said he sullenly. "You see what comes of all your foolish
talking! You have ruined our chances as well as your own!"

Half-a-dozen mounted camel-men had appeared suddenly over the lip of the
bowl-s