aybreak. They were shocked therefore at
this sudden outbreak, and tried to calm him with soothing words.

"Mad as a hatter," he shouted. "Whatever do you think I saw?"

"Don't trouble about it, whatever it was," said Mrs. Belmont, laying
her hand soothingly upon his as the camels closed together. "It is no
wonder that you are overdone. You have thought and worked for all of us
so long. We shall halt presently, and a few hours' sleep will quite
restore you."

But the Colonel looked up again, and again he cried out in his agitation
and surprise.

"I never saw anything plainer in my life," he groaned. "It is on the
point of rock on our right front--poor old Stuart with my red cummerbund
round his head just the same as we left him."

The ladies had followed the direction of the Colonel's frightened gaze,
and in an instant they were all as amazed as he.

There was a black, bulging ridge like a bastion upon the right side of
the terrible khor up which the camels were winding. At one point it
rose into a small pinnacle. On this pinnacle stood a solitary,
motionless figure, clad entirely in black, save for a brilliant dash of
scarlet upon his head. There could not surely be two such short sturdy
figures, or such large colourless faces, in the Libyan Desert. His
shoulders were stooping forward, and he seemed to be staring intently
down into the ravine. His pose and outline were like a caricature of
the great Napoleon.

"Can it possibly be he?"

"It must be. It is!" cried the ladies. "You see he is looking towards
us and waving his hand."

"Good Heavens! They'll shoot him! Get down, you fool, or you'll be
shot!" roared the Colonel. But his dry throat would only emit a
discordant croaking.

Several of the Dervishes had seen the singular apparition upon the hill,
and had unslung their Remingtons, but a long arm suddenly shot up behind
the figure of the Birmingham clergyman, a brown hand seized upon his
skirts, and he disappeared with a snap. Higher up the pass, just below
the spot where Mr. Stuart had been standing, appeared the tall figure of
the Emir Abderrahman. He had sprung upon a boulder, and was shouting
and waving his arms, but the shouts were drowned in a long, rippling
roar of musketry from each side of the khor. The bastion-like cliff was
fringed with gun-barrels, with red tarbooshes drooping over the
triggers. From the other lip also came the long spurts of flame and the
angry clatter o