ever have ventured to believe it."

"I am afraid that I behaved very badly. Captain Archer says that I
nearly spoiled all their plans, and that I deserved to be tried by a
drumhead court-martial and shot. The fact is that, when I heard the
Arabs beneath me, I forgot myself in my anxiety to know if any of you
were left."

"I wonder that you were not shot without any drumhead court-martial,"
said the Colonel. "But how in the world did you get here?"

"The Halfa people were close upon our track at the time when I was
abandoned, and they picked me up in the desert. I must have been
delirious, I suppose, for they tell me that they heard my voice, singing
hymns, a long way off, and it was that, under the providence of God,
which brought them to me. They had a camel ambulance, and I was quite
myself again by next day. I came with the Sarras people after we met
them, because they have the doctor with them. My wound is nothing, and
he says that a man of my habit will be the better for the loss of blood.
And now, my friends"--his big, brown eyes lost their twinkle, and became
very solemn and reverent--"we have all been upon the very confines of
death, and our dear companions may be so at this instant. The same
Power which saved us may save them, and let us pray together that it may
be so, always remembering that if, in spite of our prayers, it should
_not_ be so, then that also must be accepted as the best and wisest
thing."

So they knelt together among the black rocks, and prayed as some of them
had never prayed before. It was very well to discuss prayer and treat
it lightly and philosophically upon the deck of the _Korosko_. It was
easy to feel strong and self-confident in the comfortable deck-chair,
with the slippered Arab handing round the coffee and liqueurs. But they
had been swept out of that placid stream of existence, and dashed
against the horrible, jagged facts of life. Battered and shaken, they
must have something to cling to. A blind, inexorable destiny was too
horrible a belief. A chastening power, acting intelligently and for a
purpose--a living, working power, tearing them out of their grooves,
breaking down their small sectarian ways, forcing them into the better
path--that was what they had learned to realise during these days of
horror. Great hands had closed suddenly upon them, and had moulded them
into new shapes, and fitted them for new uses. Could such a power be
deflected by any human