e magic cities
one reads about in the chronicles of Sindbad the Sailor. But they
spoke no word of love. When alone with this remarkable young woman,
Bruce found himself invariably tongue-tied.

At the same hour, less than fifty miles away, Umballa stood before the
opening of his elaborate tent, erected at sundown by the river's brink,
and scowled at the moon. He saw no beauty in the translucent sky, in
the silvery paleness of the world below. He wanted revenge, and the
word hissed in his brain as a viper hisses in the dark of its cave.

Dung fires twinkled and soldiers lounged about them, smoking and
gossiping. They had been given an earnest against their long
delinquent wages; and they were in a happy frame of mind. Their dead
comrades were dead and mourning was for widows; but for them would be
the pleasures of swift reprisals. The fugitives had gone toward the
desert, and in that bleak stretch of treeless land it would not be
difficult to find them, once they started in pursuit.

Midnight.

In the compound the moonlight lay upon everything; upon the fat sides
and back of the sacred white elephant, upon the three low caste
keepers, now free of the vigilant eye of their Brahmin chief. The
gates were barred and closed; all inside the house of Bala Khan were
asleep. Far away a sentry dozed on his rifle, on the wall. The three
keepers whispered and chuckled among themselves.

"Who will know?" said one.

"The moon will not speak," said another.

"Then, let us go and smoke."

The three approached the elephant. A bit of gymnastics and one of them
was boosted to the back of the elephant to whom this episode was more
or less familiar. Another followed; the third was pulled up, and from
the elephant's back they made the top of the wall and disappeared down
into the street. Here they paused cautiously, for two guards always
patrolled the front of the compound during the night. Presently the
three truants stole away toward the bazaars which in this desert town
occupied but a single street. Down they went into a cellar way and the
guru's curse stalked beside them. For opium is the handmaiden of all
curses.

Perhaps twenty minutes later slight sounds came from the front of the
compound wall. A rifle barrel clattered upon the cobbles. Then, over
the wall, near the elephant, a head appeared, then a body. This was
repeated four times, and four light-footed nomads of the desert lowered
themselves into the